Technological Advances Bring Exoplanets into Clearer View
Wednesday, April 14, 2010 - 15:49
in Astronomy & Space
In late 2008 two teams made waves with the simultaneous announcement that they had managed to directly photograph planets in orbit around distant stars, also known as exoplanets. Although hundreds of exoplanets had already been found orbiting sun-like stars throughout the Milky Way, they had been discovered by indirect means--astronomers had inferred the presence of a planet by observing the dimming effects or gravitational wobble an orbiting companion induces on its parent star. In a few other cases a candidate planet had been observed near a star but had not been proved to follow a planet-like orbit. [More]