On Sunday, December 17, 2017 at 6:26:54 AM UTC-5, David Spain wrote:
Kepler uses dip in light curves of stars to determine the existence of
exo-planets, but that presumption is that these "exo" solar systems have=

their ecliptics aligned with us so that transits are observable, but
there must be far more systems that do not fit that criterion than do.

So are there any telescopes in the works that can not only detect
reflected light from exo-planets but can use light arcs around their
home stars to detect them?

Just curious.

Our planets rotate on the similar plain to our galaxy. Lets call
the odds of most of our planets orbiting on the same plain as our
galaxy 50 to 1 , ruff estimate. This would mean that the odds of
other solar systems in our galaxy also being on the same plain as
our galaxy high. This improves the possibility of sensing a dip in
brightness caused by a planet in front of it's star if the telescope
is pointed in the direction of our galaxy on the same plain.

However the arcs would be nice. I would venture a guess the planet
reflected light is too small and added to this being very close to
a bright star. It would exceed the dynamic range of the light sensor.
A 16 bit A/D would have a hard time telling the difference between
a bright star and a dim planet.

[[Mod. note --
1. No, the planets in our solar system do NOT orbit in the plane of
our galaxy.
2. The author is correct that directly imaging an extrasolar planet
requires a HUGE dynamic range. To this end, attempts to do this
generally include a coronagraph to block almost all of the host
star's light. There's a bit of discussion of coronagraph designs
in Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronagraph
Even with a coronagraph, scattered light from the host star is
still the #1 problem in direct detection of extrasolar planets.
-- jt]]