The Planet Seekers
from the hunt-it-down dept
A fascinating article in Wired about astronomers who are trying to be the first to photograph a planet outside our solar system. While plenty of new planets have been “discovered”, none have yet been photographed. The article explains the various technology advances that have allowed this to be possible, though there are clearly still a number of challenges. There are also (of course) a lot of politics involved in who gets access to which telescopes at what time and for how long. Still, as the technology continues to improve, astronomers are hoping that they’ll at least be able to determine if there are other planets out there capable of supporting life like the Earth.
