Direct imaging is a family of exoplanet-detection techniques that resolve a planet’s light separately from its host star’s, as opposed to indirect methods like transit photometry or radial velocity. Practical direct imaging requires suppressing the host star’s glare by factors of 10⁶ to 10¹⁰.
Methods
- Coronagraphs — internal occulters that block the star’s light
- Starshades — external occulters flown in formation with a telescope
- Wavefront control / adaptive optics — correcting residual starlight at the focal plane
- Angular differential imaging — using telescope roll to distinguish real planets from speckle artifacts
Current and future instruments
- jwst MIRI coronagraph (15 μm) — used for the alpha-centauri-a candidate (src-alpha-centauri-a-exoplanet-2026)
- jwst MIRI coronagraph (10.6 / 11.3 μm) — used to detect water-ice-clouds on epsilon-indi-ab (src-jwst-ice-clouds-exoplanet-2026-04)
- nancy-grace-roman-space-telescope coronagraph — launching 2027
- project-blue — proposed dedicated Alpha Centauri imager
- habitable-worlds-observatory — future NASA flagship designed for direct imaging of Earth-like planets
- LIFE — proposed mid-IR space interferometer; complements HWO
Priority targets
RV-confirmed nearby habitable-zone planets feed direct-imaging target lists. Priority examples: gj-887-d (10.7 ly, 2026 confirmation), Proxima Centauri b, and the alpha-centauri-a gas-giant candidate.
Direct imaging is methodologically distinct from transmission-spectroscopy (used for K2-18b’s biosignature claim) and from radio technosignatures searches (used for K2-18b’s technosignature null result).
Sources
- src-alpha-centauri-a-exoplanet-2026
- src-gj-887-d-habitability-2026-03
- src-jwst-biosignature-prospects-2025
- src-jwst-ice-clouds-exoplanet-2026-04
- src-aas-nova-wd-0806b-atmosphere-2026-04 — wd-0806b, second-coldest directly imaged exoplanet, JWST 2026 atmospheric characterization with first altitude-dependent K_zz (eddy-diffusion); orbits white-dwarf WD 0806-661 at 2,500 AU.