Telescopes That Changed The Way We Look At Exoplanets
Have you ever wondered, "What method do astronomers use to detect exoplanets?" It is hard to detect planets revolving around stars through direct imaging because planets are dim and small and are easily lost in the glare of stars. What we use to study these planets are indirect methods : detecting the dimming of light when a planet passes from in front of the star(transit method) or monitoring the star's spectrum for signs of a planet pulling on it and generating a Doppler shift in the star's light. Other methods include gravitational lensing, radial velocity, and coronagraphs. Source: scientificamerican.com The stars' brightness would absorb any light reflected from the planets at visible wavelengths. So we use an infrared wavelength of light as their integral heat burns relatively brightly at longer wavelengths. Kepler Space Telescope made one of the mind-boggling discoveries that our galaxy has more planets than stars. Here is a series of telescopes that have