Why images of Earth-like exoplanets are so elusive #shorts

We have found over 6,000 exoplanets. Planets orbiting other stars out there in the Universe. But here is the thing that keeps us astrophysicists up at night — we’ve still not managed to take an image of an Earth-like planet. Despite all our recent advancements in telescopes, building them ever bigger and bigger, the direct detection and imaging of exoplanets can still only give us images of massive Jupiter-like planets orbiting far out from their stars. Why? Because this is really hard to do, just because stars are so incredibly bright they drown out the tiny amount of light reflected off their planets. It’d be like trying to detect someone holding up their phone torchlight next to a stadium floodlight from miles away. But a brand new paper published last month by Soliman et al. has proposed a way of doing this in the most sci-fi way possible. Not with a bigger space telescope, or with a better camera. But a 99-metre-wide umbrella. In space! The technical term is starshade, with the idea being to block out the bright light of the star, so that we have a hope of detecting the faint light of the planet right next to it... Watch the full video here: https://youtu.be/zdTsaf68wd8 Soliman et al. (2026) - paywalled - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-026-02787-9 Video filmed on a Sony ⍺7 IV Video edited by Martino Gasparrini: [email protected] Video produced by Marina Hui & Dr Becky Smethurst --- 📚 My book, "A Brief History of Black Holes", out NOW in hardback, paperback, e-book and audiobook (which I narrated myself!): http://lnk.to/DrBecky --- 👕 My merch, including JWST designs, are available here (with worldwide shipping!): https://dr-becky.teemill.com/ --- 🎧 Royal Astronomical Society Podcast that I co-host: podfollow.com/supermassive --- 🔔 Don't forget to subscribe and click the little bell icon to be notified when I post a new video! --- 👩🏽‍💻 I'm Dr. Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford. I love making videos about science with an unnatural level of enthusiasm. I like to focus on how we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don't know. If you've ever wondered about something in space and couldn't find an answer online - you can ask me! My day job is to do research into how supermassive black holes can affect the galaxies that they live in. In particular, I look at whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars. http://drbecky.uk.com