The really exciting thing is that, one day, the techniques we’ve developed will give us our first secure evidence of the existence of life on a planet outside our solar system
— Ian Parry
Astronomers have conducted the first remote reconnaissance of a distant solar system, using new telescope imaging techniques to reveal the chemical composition of exoplanets orbiting a star 128 light years from Earth.
Project 1640 has harnessed new software and instruments to collect the first chemical fingerprints - or spectra – of the solar system’s four red planets.
Previous imaging studies had only managed partial measurement of the system’s outermost planet before light from the star itself blinded the technology.
Now, for the first time, scientists have been able to penetrate the starlight to read the unique light signatures of the chemical elements that make up the atmospheres of the four planets.
While the exoplanets proved “too toxic and hot” to sustain life as we know it, scientists believe that the techniques they are developing will one day give mankind the “first secure evidence of life on a planet outside our solar system,” according to co-author Ian Parry from the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge.
A detailed description of the study will be published in The Astrophysical Journal.
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Image: Exoplanet imaging from Project 1640. After applying several advanced optical techniques the P1640 camera sees only a very small fraction of the light from HR8799 in this "speckle" pattern. The images of the 4 planets are still buried in this pattern
Credit: Ian Parry/Project 1640
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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