Quote:
Originally Posted by DaFace
We don't have telescopes anywhere near good enough to get a picture of one of these planets. See the recent flyby of Pluto to give you an idea of how grainy our Earth-bound telescopes even for a planet that's in our own neighborhood.
The way they find this stuff is by measuring the light that a star puts off and looking for periods when the light dims from that star (when a planet crosses in front of it). By measuring the magnitude of the dimming and the frequency at which the light dims in the same way, they can get a feel for how big the planet is that caused it and how long its orbit is.
Taking it a step further, different compounds cause the light to dim in different ways. That's where the JWST comes in. It should be able to give us an idea of what compounds are present in the atmosphere of these planets. Mostly, we're looking for oxygen. If we find oxygen, it's highly likely that there is at least SOME form of life there.
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Yep. Crazy what they can tell from light curves. I studied the Kepler/K2 mission quite a bit in one of my aerospace courses.