The WFIRST spacecraft will be equipped with an infrared telescope with a primary mirror the same size as in the Hubble Space Telescope -2.4 meters in diameter- and two instruments, the Wide Field Instrument and the
Coronograph. The Wide Field Instrument will have a field of view that is 100 times greater than the Hubble infrared instrument, capturing more of the sky with less observing time.
Lyot invented the
coronograph, (8) and since then the corona had been observed without waiting for total eclipses that only last for a few minutes.
With the advent of the Lyot
coronograph in 1930, the study of the solar corona outside of total eclipses became possible [19].
Project 1640's sensors can distinguish between the residual starlight that sneaks through the
coronograph and the light from planets, allowing astronomers to filter out background starlight more effectively and tease out exoplanet glows.
The phenomena of the atmosphere of the planet in the shape of cusp extensions were seen in superb professional
coronograph images supplied by Paolo Tanga, and in several visual observations.