Submitted by Aeromarine_eng t3_11y2gpw in space
danielravennest t1_jd90e6s wrote
Reply to comment by The_Solar_Oracle in A New Mission Will Search for Habitable Planets at Alpha Centauri by Aeromarine_eng
In particular, the Sun is a gravitational lens. If you travel about 800 AU in the opposite direction from Alpha Centauri, you can look back and see what is there in great detail, because the lens is 2 million km in diameter. One reason to be that far out is to make it easy to block out the Sun itself, including prominances and the solar corona.
Centauri is 276,000 AU, so using the Sun is a lot easier mission.
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