Astronomers have conducted a remote reconnaissance of a distant solar system with a new telescope imaging system that sifts through the blinding light of stars. Using a suite of high-tech instrumentation and software called Project 1640, the scientists collected the first chemical fingerprints, or spectra, of this system’s four red exoplanets, which orbit a star 128 light years away from Earth.

The new Action Comics #14, published this month by DC Comics, reveals that even Superman visits the Museum’s Hayden Planetarium—and not just to see the Space Show. The superhero, it turns out, comes once a year to see images of his far-off home planet, Krypton, said to orbit its home-star every 382 days. To locate the fictional planet in the actual sky, DC Comics worked with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Museum’s Hayden Planetarium. Watch a video about the process.

Over the last few years, the search for planets that revolve around stars other than our Sun—known as exoplanets—has accelerated and yielded amazing results. Will scientists find one whose conditions closely resemble Earth’s? Find out what lies ahead in the Tuesday, October 30, Astronomy Live! program with Emily Rice, an astrophysicist and Museum research associate who will guide visitors on a “ride” through space in the Hayden Planetarium Space Theater.

An advanced telescope imaging system that started taking data last month is the first of its kind capable of spotting planets orbiting suns outside of our solar system. The collaborative set of high-tech instrumentation and software, called Project 1640, is now operating on the Hale telescope at the Palomar Observatory in California, where it uses a new starlight-suppressing technique to see dim planets and other celestial objects in the star’s neighborhood. A large portion of the imaging system was developed and tested in the Museum’s optics laboratory by Ben R. Oppenheimer, an associate curator in the Department of Astrophysics and principal investigator for the project.

In the past 16 years, astronomers have discovered more than 700 exoplanets, or planets that orbit other stars. If scientists find signs of life on these planets, it will profoundly impact everything from religion and philosophy to art and biology. In this podcast from the fall, astronomer Ray Jayawardhana shares some of the ideas from his book, Strange New Worlds, about life beyond our solar system.

Dr. Jayawardhana’s talk was recorded at the Hayden Planetarium on October 3, 2011.

Podcast: Download | RSS | iTunes (1 hour 56 mins, 140 MB)