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Astronomers have seen their first stars through what should be Earth’s most
powerful optical telescope system. The Keck Interferometer has been created by
building a tunnel to link two 10-metre telescopes at the Keck Observatory in
Hawaii, making them work like an 85-metre telescope. The system doesn’t produce
normal images. Instead, computers combine light waves from the two telescopes in
a way that cancels out the glare of bright objects and makes fainter objects
clear. NASA hopes the interferometer will be powerful enough to spot planets in
Earth-like orbits around nearby stars.