Telescopes

The endeavor is still focused mostly on the approach that is arguably the most obvious for finding planets. Although using a telescope is not as easy as it may seem, it is how we obtain the incredible photos that Hubble and later the Webb telescope have returned to us. The challenging thing is knowing where to look.

Where to position a telescope can be determined by a variety of telltale indicators. The wobbling method is one approach. You locate a far-off star and study its light. You focus the telescope on that region if the star appears to be wobbling because that suggests an object may be orbiting the star.

To help in our quest, we already have a large number of satellites and probes in the sky. There are several others on the way, including Spitzer, Kepler, Tess, and Cheops, in addition to Webb and Hubble. The launch of PLATO by the European Space Agency in 2024 will enable it to observe one million stars and look for planets surrounding them.