New Delhi: An exoplanet is a planet outside the Solar System. For centuries philosophers and scientists supposed that extrasolar planets existed, but there was no way of detecting them.
The first confirmed detection of exoplanet came in 1992, with the discovery of several terrestrial-mass planets orbiting the pulsar PSR B1257ი.
Now till date more than a thousand such planets have been discovered.
After discovering these exoplanets, now researchers at University of California have also secured success in developing an instrument which can click the pictures of these planets.
The team used a prototype instrument called the Fibered Imager for Single Telescope (FIRST) earlier this year.
This instrument was made with the combination of two high-resolution telescope techniques - adaptive optics and interferometry .
The astronomers mounted an improved instrument on the Subaru 8-meter telescope in Hawaii that has the potential to one day resolve exoplanets, or Earth-like planets around M-type “dwarf” stars, which are slightly smaller and cooler than the sun.
