Not long ago, a science teacher would have told his students that there was no evidence of planets around other star systems. Even more recently, they could have said that while we have seen evidence of extrasolar planets, we could never see them directly. But all that has changed. [Jason Wang] has several videos that use images taken over years to visualize the orbits of several large exoplanets. Of course, this is some extrapolation. According [Jason]: Unfortunately we do not have the luxury of observing these planets every night and recording them. However, these planets move slowly, with orbital periods of at least decades long, and, unsurprisingly, follow Kepler’s laws. We can use a technique called motion interpolation to reconstruct what the image should look like using images taken before and after the date we are interested in. Motion tweening is a technique commonly found in video editing and on modern televisions. Apparently you have to be a patient photographer. A video has 30 images taken over 17 years, for example. Another has 10 images of the Keck Observatory taken over 12 years. The work has fueled scientific articles like this one or this one. While it may be more fun to view these star systems from the bridge of your favorite spaceship, this is probably the closest you’ll get. We find both the perspective of exoplanets and the technology used to find them interesting.
