https://sefffal.github.io/images/orbital-animation.mp4
The creator of the GIF above used a data from a range of different telescopes and wavelengths, whereas I made this with using data only from same telescope (Keck), instrument, and wavelength (3.5 microns; near infrared).
I appreciate that scientist are not always after the pretty pictures. They can be expensive, do not always give the data needed, and the experiments do not always produce data that has obvious pretty picture potential. Still, for the average non professional scientist (me) the pictures are about all I will ever get out of the science.
This work earned the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2020/summary/
As more telescopes come online, there'll be more data available for this type of stuff. You gotta realize that when a telescope only looks at something once per year, it takes a long time to gather enough data for these types of images to be created. My go to example is the motion of stars around SagA*.
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/the-roman-coronagraph-inst...
The Roman Coronagraph is designed to detect planets 100 million times fainter than their stars, which is 100 to 1,000 times better than existing space-based coronagraphs. The Roman Coronagraph will be capable of directly imaging reflected starlight from a planet akin to Jupiter in size, temperature, and distance from its parent star.
As long as the telescope can fit through the Starlink Pez dispenser.
Such an architecture might not be an impossible design consideration if the goal is to have something big like the sun-shade/cold side of the Webb telescope.
DrBecky's video on it: https://youtube.com/watch?v=z2JIkAPcdnU
The star in the middle of the animation, is approximately 20AU (Astronomical Units) in size looking at the scale line. 20AU is approximately 1.8b miles/3b kilometres or approximately the distance from the Sun to Uranus.
If Google's correct, if everyone on Earth lived on that star - each and every one of us could have a backyard larger than the surface area of Earth ;p
It looks like HR8799 that the animation is based on is about 1.5x the radius of the sun.
That being said, my silly point still holds - there are stars that are truly massive. Stephenson 2-18 is approximately the size I mentioned, which is genuinely impossible to comprehend.
The star in the video, HR 8799, is about 50% larger than the sun.
I always thought we would never be able to image something like that. The distances would be too small and the contrast too large to figure something at the resolution we can get on earth. I'll need to read up on how this was done.
That angle is about the diameter of a US quarter coin seen from 11km (7mi) away.
Their balanced position and simultaneous changes make them seem like an artifact of the imaging.
Also, they are too regular in position and in their timeing (simultaneous) to be random noise, but could be an artifact of some part of the imaging and processing chain.