New Planets in the Dark

A large daisy-shaped shade has been suggested as a new means of finding Earth-like planets. It would orbit the system's star, blocking the light so that it does not interfere with our telescopes, and would be followed in orbit by a telescope searching for light reflected from planets.

Those poor aliens who finally got used to their eclipse will have a whole new darkness to fear. Probably an extra hundred alien "women" will be sacrificed to make it leave. Or it will block sunlight on the one day the plants that are their sole source of food flower, and since the plants depend on that sunlight to trigger the flowering, very few plants will flower and become pollinated and there will be mass starvation for the next year. Or perhaps they're a very advanced culture and darkness is seen as an offensive symbol (they don't like nighttime), and so they figure out where the shield came from, decide we intend war, and come in huge numbers with super advanced weapons and begin to destroy our planet until (let's not be totally pessimistic here!) a kid playing with homemade solar shades accidentally reflects sunlight at them, and seeing it as a sign of peace and apology, they all go home again and destroy the shield we sent.

Perhaps they can only live on the side of the planet where it's always day, and the tiny bit of shade coming by sets off a year worth of wild joy and celebration.

Or, y'know, perhaps there's no aliens there at all, and we simply use our technology to find, or not find, other planets. But what fun is that?