NASA's newly launched Roman Space Telescope will 'directly' image exoplanets. But what does that mean?

A brand new observatory began its tenure on Aug. 30 — it's called the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, and it's equipped with a high-tech tool that can directly photograph planets beyond our solar system.

The tool is called a coronagraph; in simple terms, a coronagraph is a device that can be affixed to a telescope and block out the light of a star the telescope is looking at to study features around that star. Without such a device, starlight can be so overpowering that it outshines details nearby. You can think of a coronagraph as a way to recreate a total solar eclipse, except instead of the moon blocking out the sun it's a humanmade mask of sorts that does that trick.

But while coronagraphs have been used many times before, the one that just launched toward the stars is unprecedented. "The Read Entire Article