It wouldn't look like any telescope you might have ever seen. Once we have a candidate exoplanet we want to take a picture of we would launch a flock of free-flying solar-sail propelled satellites in such an orbit that they get yeeted away from the sun on a trajectory opposite of the target exoplanet. They would travel to the "focal plane" of the sun's gravitational lens where the exoplanet's light is smeared to a ring around the sun which they collaboratively capture. Probably one such a pass wouldn't be enough, so we would need to send such flocks multiple times, like waves following on each other.
What I love about the plan is that it is both super scifi, yet we already have all the components to make it happen if we want to.
It wouldn't look like any telescope you might have ever seen. Once we have a candidate exoplanet we want to take a picture of we would launch a flock of free-flying solar-sail propelled satellites in such an orbit that they get yeeted away from the sun on a trajectory opposite of the target exoplanet. They would travel to the "focal plane" of the sun's gravitational lens where the exoplanet's light is smeared to a ring around the sun which they collaboratively capture. Probably one such a pass wouldn't be enough, so we would need to send such flocks multiple times, like waves following on each other.
What I love about the plan is that it is both super scifi, yet we already have all the components to make it happen if we want to.