Flower-Shaped Starshade Helps Astronomers Snap Pictures of Exoplanets [VIDEO]

A giant spacecraft, similar to a sunflower, is designed to block the bright glare of the stars and help future space telescopes capture pictures of Earth-like rocky planets surrounded by bright stars, the space agency NASA announced.

Starshade, the new prototype,  blocks the starlight  coming from stars around planets similar to the Earth in size, composition and temperature. The spacecraft has been developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif.

 This project is led by Jeremy Kasdin, a professor at Princeton University, N.J, in collaboration with JPL. The flower-shaped petal used in the design is what makes the starshade extremely effective.

 "The shape of the petals, when seen from far away, creates a softer edge that causes less bending of light waves," Dr. Stuart Shaklan, JPL's lead engineer on the starshade project said earlier in a news release. "Less light bending means that the starshade shadow is very dark, so the telescope can take images of the planets without being overwhelmed by starlight."

For more than 15 years astronomers have been on a hunt for exoplanets. But they found it challenging to picture one of those small rocky worlds that are similar to the Pale Blue Dot (Earth). Hundreds of such planets were discovered by NASA's Kepler mission; some of the planets were larger than the Earth and were located in the 'Goldilocks zone'. (The habitable or life zone,an area of space in which a planet is just the right distance from its home star so that its surface is neither too hot nor too cold.)

To help make the find easier, the NASA engineers have developed flower-shaped starshade that would help astronomers investigate whether the exoplanets support life.

The starshade can be launched along with a telescope and on reaching the zero gravity; it would detach itself from the rocket and telescope, unfurl its petals and travel to the desired location to block the starlight.

Starshade gives planet hunters several advantages. The strength of it lies in its simplicity and also it can be used with multi-purpose space telescopes

"A starshade mission would allow us to directly image Earth-size, rocky exoplanets, which is something we can't do from the ground," says Kasdin. "We'll be able to show people a picture of a dot and explain that that's another Earth."