Can we actually take a photograph of an exoplanet?
Only the largest telescopes of all can photograph planets orbiting other stars than the Sun, and that is what exoplanets do. Even the closest ones are billions of km away, and their faint light is very difficult to capture for a camera.
Exoplanets do not emit light themselves, rather they reflect a little of the light from their star. Today, astronomers can only photograph large exoplanets orbiting far away from their star. They must be larger than Jupiter and so far away from their star that their light is not drowned out by the star’s light.
In 2008, we managed to photograph exoplanets for the first time. By means of the huge Gemini and Keck telescopes in Hawaii, Canadian and US astronomers spotted no less than three planets around the HR8799 star. Since then, a fourth exoplanet orbiting the star has also been captured in images.