Eyes Wide Open for New Exoplanet Hunter
Good news for exoplanet lovers: a new planet hunter is now working at ESO’s LaSilla Observatory in Chile.
MASCARA is short for Multi-site All-SkyCAmeRA. It’s made of five wide-angle digital cameras
that together photograph almost the entire sky in one go.
It will look at thousands of the brightest stars in the sky watching for a slight dip in their brightness...
... caused by an orbiting planet passing in front of the star, aka a transiting exoplanet.
Large telescopes like the VLT will then study these planets in detail, particularly their atmospheres.
#FutureGoals
Transcribed by ESO, translated by —