Ground-Based Observatories Could use Starshades to see Planets too

All hail the occulter: an orbiting starshade for ground-based telescopes. Ground-based telescopes and orbiting observatories have revealed thousands of exoplanets orbiting other stars. And while the techniques used by those instruments have proven to be incredibly powerful in discovery, they are decidedly less capable in characterization. That’s because most exoplanet-hunting techniques rely on indirect measurements …