Slashdot Mirror
Looking Directly at Extrasolar Planets
D2Deek writes "Science Daily is reporting on a new device called an Optical Vortex Coronagraph that's been invented to directly image planets orbiting other stars by using a special lens that "spins out" the light from the star leaving only the reflected light from the planet." I just can't imagine trying to clean a lens shaped like a giant corkscrew.
I tend to think it's quite appropriate. Granted, in the strictist of senses, yes a planet reflect the star's light while a match creates its own. But from a analogical sense, it works. The brightness of the light from the match is a fraction of the light coming out of the headlight, just as the light reflected towards us from the planet is many times dimmer than the starlight itself. When applied to very large planets, which are the only extra-solar ones we've discovered so far, the size comparison works as well. Plus who's to say the planet is not a dim-light emitting gas giant? ;)
The point is, the analogy does get across the difficulty of this acheivement quite well, even moreso when you don't knitpick it to oblivion.
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You wont be able to see any surface details, but the point, for those who don't already know, is that if you can look at just the light that's reflected, then you can run that light through a spectroscope. If you see in the spectroscope that there is free oxygen in the atmosphere, then you've probably found life. See, free oxygen (O2) doesn't occur anywhere in nature - except where it's created by life. So, if you find lots of O2 in the atmosphere, you've found a living planet (and a reason to build daedelus)
Can't image things until you can find them. Can't find them if the starlight is making it impossible to discern the planet.
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