06-06-2019, 08:31 AM
This is posted in advance of the TMT’s construction on Mauna Kea, as an example of what will be possible once the telescope goes into operation:
Astronomers Snap a Rare Picture of Two Baby Planets
Scientists have never actually seen the vast majority of the 4,000 exoplanets, or planets orbiting stars other than our own, discovered in the last three decades. Instead, the existence of the planets is calculated from indirect observations...
The Very Large Telescope imaged Planets PDS 70b and PDS 70c about 370 light years away creating a gap in the gas and dust disk around their star.
Other next-generation telescopes either proposed or under construction, including the Giant Magellan Telescope, the Thirty Meter Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope will also allow us to see the thousands of exoplanets in our galaxy just little bit more clearly in the near future.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-new...180972357/
Astronomers Snap a Rare Picture of Two Baby Planets
Scientists have never actually seen the vast majority of the 4,000 exoplanets, or planets orbiting stars other than our own, discovered in the last three decades. Instead, the existence of the planets is calculated from indirect observations...
The Very Large Telescope imaged Planets PDS 70b and PDS 70c about 370 light years away creating a gap in the gas and dust disk around their star.
Other next-generation telescopes either proposed or under construction, including the Giant Magellan Telescope, the Thirty Meter Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope will also allow us to see the thousands of exoplanets in our galaxy just little bit more clearly in the near future.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-new...180972357/
“We do this thing not because it is easy, but because we thought it would be easy.”