[Brett66]

The Keck and European Southern Observatory telescopes should have the power to directly image some of the larger exo-planets when they become fully operational.(2003-2005) If we can get a moon-base optical interferometer set up with a baseline the diameter of the moon, we'll be able to get Voyager quality pictures of exo-planets out to 20-30 light years. We could get Mariner-quality pics of exo-planets out to 30-70 light years from Earth.

[RightWhale]

Kind of reminds one of the radar image of Venus last year using two of the big radio telescopes. A 1000 miles baseline [whatever it was, I forget] gives a decent resolution of the surface, like SAR images of earth.