On 13/01/2012 10:39 AM, Elassoto wrote:
The Kepler telescope is discovering many planets by searching for
changes in a star's brightness when a planet transits across the face of
a star. However, with that method of observing planets, we cannot see
any of the details of the planet. While Kepler may not be powerful
enough to see details of the planet, maybe future telescopes, such as
James Webb will. To see the details it will have to see the bright side
of the planet, so it will have to see the planets while they are on the
far side of the star. To do that they can use solar occlusion so that
the light from the star will not interfere with the light from the
planet. The diagram below shows how it could work.

Some exoplanets have already been imaged by the Hubble and various
terrestrial telescopes. But of course, they are all gas giants, and
pretty far away from their stars. And even still, the images are really
nothing more than fuzzy pixels.

Astronomers Capture First Exoplanet Images : Discovery Space
http://dsc.discovery.com/space/im/ex...ra-seager.html

Yousuf Khan