Could telescopes eventually clearly show extra-solar planets?
Actually, NASA is planning for a space telescope designed to directly detect and image planets around nearby stars. It would actually be two telescopes working together as an interferometer. (I have some doubts about the design, but that’s what they’ve proposed.) But it wouldn’t be anything like as clear as the images we get of planets inside this solar system. For certain physical reasons your ability to discern detail at a distance is a function of the width of your light-capturing system (i.e. your mirror or mirrors). As a practical matter, that means using interferometers. The best optical interferometer in the world right now is the VLTI in Chile. The largest radio interferometer ever created was twice the radius of the orbit of the earth, when the same radio telescope observed the same target 6 months apart and combined the data. (That isn’t possi
