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SPACE CHRONICLEShidden by its glare) can be seen dur-
ing a total eclipse, so the corona-
graph creates a kind of artificial
eclipse of its target star, blocking its
light and allowing much dimmer ob-
jects in its vicinity to be detected.
This marks a significant advance in
observational capabilities.
The coronagraph has been installed
on one of the VLT’s four 8 - metre-
aperture telescopes, upgrading and
modifying an existing instrument,
called VISIR, to optimise its sensitiv-T
his image shows NEAR mounted
on UT 4 , with the telescope in-
clined at low altitude. [ESO/NEAR
Collaboration]T
his image shows the NEAR ex-
periment being mounted on the
Cassegrain focus of the VLT’s UT 4.
[ESO/NEAR Collaboration]from their host stars; resolving a
small planet close to its star at a dis-
tance of several light-years has been
compared to spotting a moth cir-
cling a street lamp dozens of miles
away. To solve this problem, in 2016
Breakthrough Watch and ESOlaunched a collaboration to
build a special instrument
called a thermal infrared coro-
nagraph, designed to block
out most of the light coming
from the star and optimised to
capture the infrared light
emitted by the warm surface
of an orbiting planet, rather
than the small amount of
starlight it reflects. Just as ob-
jects near to the Sun (normallychronicles EN_l'Astrofilo 29/08/2019 15:56 Page 36