Will we ever be able to image exoplanets?

[777]

With over 200 extra solar planets discovered to date, a thought came to me. It would be fascinating if we could take pictures of these planets and see what they look like.

With telescope projects like Darwin and the Terrestrial planet finder being planned, my question is: will we ever be able to have the technology to be able to capture enough light from these exoplanets to be able to compile clear images of them? I am really hoping that, in the next 10 years, we will start getting glimpses of these planets.

 

[Twilight]

TPF (SIM) is a long way off given funding issues. A cryogenic interferometer in space is an extremely expensive project.

However, there are several proposals on the table (a few making headway) that are similarly capable and much much cheaper. The New Worlds Observer project (Northrop Grumman) has been getting a lot of attention. Basically just build a "cheap" 2.4 m light bucket (like Hubble, but with a far less complicated science payload) and place a "feathered" flower-like coronograph (basically an expensive, opaque in optical piece of fabric) a few thousand km in front of it.


Check it out! I've sat in on some high level meetings for the project, and people are really quite excited about it. (It's still at proposal stage, though).

About a year ago the idea was tossed around of putting the coronograph in front of JWST (negating the need to build another telescope, cutting your cost greatly), but that might prove to be impractical and technically unsound.



http://www.aas.org/publications/baas/v35n5/aas203/984.htm
http://space.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2542/25424001.jpg

 

[TheMasterOfOrion]

Mirror Testing at NASA Breaks Superstitious Myths

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2010/10-003.html

 

[Christopher]

If an observatory were set up at the Sun's gravitational focus at 550 AU or beyond, it could use the Sun's gravity-lensing effect as the most powerful telescope ever made. It could allow us not only to image exoplanets directly, but to make fairly detailed maps of their surfaces.

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=176
http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=8813