Has the Hubble Space telescope looked at any nearby stars for signs of planets ?
Yes. Astronomer Westphal, during Cycle 1, did a study of circumstellar matter around nearby stars, and in Cycle 4, Astronomer Barbieri searched for low-mass companions to nearby astrometric binaries. The above Hubble Space Telescope image of AB Auriga’s complex circumstellar disk comes with the following caption: Normally, a young star’s bright light prevents astronomers from seeing material closer to it. That’s why astronomers used a coronograph in these two images of AB Aurigae to block most of the light from the star. The rest of the disk material is illuminated by light reflected from the gas and dust surrounding the star. The image on the left represents the best ground-based coronographic observation of AB Aurigae. Paul Kalas of the Space Telescope Science Institute took the image with the University of Hawaii’s 2.2-meter telescope. The telescope’s coronograph eclipsed a 33.5-billion-mile (53.6-billion-kilometer) area centered on the star. This area is nine times larger than our
