| Figure 1: The solar corona and the solar wind observed by a SECCHI coronagraph on a STEREO probe. |
| This week, in Nature, Eugene Serabyn of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and his colleagues describe a stunning implementation of what is known as an optical vortex coronagraph. |
| In 1930 the French astronomer Bernard Lyot invented the coronagraph, a specialized telescope that produces an artificial eclipse of the Sun. |
| In other words, a coronagraph produces an artificial solar eclipse. |
| By the time their orbits take them close to the Sun so they become bright, they are lost in the Sun's glare and require a space-based coronagraph like that on SOHO to be seen. |
| The system then blocks the star with a device called a coronagraph, revealing the exoplanet. |
