A large, specially-shaped spacecraft designed to fly in formation with a space telescope to block starlight and enable direct imaging of exoplanets. The starshade acts like an external coronagraph, casting a precise shadow that suppresses the star's light while preserving light from orbiting planets.
A compound of 'star' from Old English 'steorra' and 'shade' from Old English 'sceadu' (shadow). This modern term emerged in the early 2000s as NASA developed concepts for next-generation exoplanet detection, representing a space-age evolution of the ancient practice of using hands to shade eyes from bright light.
A starshade is basically a giant cosmic umbrella the size of a baseball field that flies 50,000 kilometers away from a telescope to create the perfect shadow! The edges must be shaped like flower petals with incredible precision - any imperfection larger than 1/10th the width of human hair would ruin the shadow and let starlight leak through.
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