Nearly 500 exoplanets -- planets orbiting other stars -- have been detected since the first was discovered in the mid-90s. A variety of methods have been used to find them: Doppler shift of starlight as the circling planets tug their stars, the dip in light as a planet passes directly in front of its star, even the change in light of a distant star as the gravity of a planet briefly magnifies it a la Einstein. But getting direct pictures of planets is really hard. A typical star is roughly a billion times brighter than a planet! And from our great distance, the planet and star are so close together that the former is lost in the latter's glare.
But a new breakthrough has just been announced by astronomers at the University of Arizona -- known for their ability to push the frontiers of what's possible observationally. What they've done ...
