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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday January 08 2019, @08:25PM   Printer-friendly
from the scoping-things-out dept.

Submitted via IRC for takyon

New BGU System Produces High-Res Images at Low Cost

An article in the December issue of the journal Optica demonstrated that nanosatellites the size of milk cartons arranged in a spherical (annular) configuration were able to capture images that match the resolution of the full-frame, lens-based or concave mirror systems used on today's telescopes.

BGU Ph.D. candidate Angika Bulbul, working under the supervision of Prof. Joseph Rosen of BGU's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, explains the groundbreaking nature of this study, saying it proves that by using a partial aperture, even a high-resolution image can be generated. This reduces the cost of traditionally large telescopic lenses.

"We found that you don't need the entire telescope lens to obtain the right images. Even by using a partial aperture area of a lens, as low as 0.43%, we managed to obtain a similar image resolution to the full aperture area of mirror or lens-based imaging system. The huge cost, time and material needed for gigantic traditional optical space telescopes with large curved mirrors can be slashed," she said.


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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 08 2019, @09:28PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 08 2019, @09:28PM (#783857)

    The primary advantage of using a single larger telescope is not resolution, but the greater aperture allows imaging of dimmer objects.

    Indeed. The advantage of a single aperture is greater light gathering power, as you point out. The advantage of interferometry is better resolution. However, interferometry suffers from a missing flux problem. [csiro.au] Is that going to be an issue for them?

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by requerdanos on Wednesday January 09 2019, @03:30AM

    by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 09 2019, @03:30AM (#783970) Journal

    interferometry suffers from a missing flux problem. Is that going to be an issue for them?

    This arguably groundbreaking study is presented here as "it's all about the megapixels".

    As with everything with shortcomings, there are shortcomings.

  • (Score: 2) by qzm on Wednesday January 09 2019, @04:12AM

    by qzm (3260) on Wednesday January 09 2019, @04:12AM (#783974)

    Well, that and flying a rotation constellation of microsats with sub-wavelength precision while pointing at different objects.
    Which would beg the question 'would it really be bigger/heavier/harder to just have them physically attached'

    This sounds a lot like an academic though-experiment with little consideration for actual implementation.

    Let along the usual BS headline - it doesnt produce anything, its a concept, unless I missed something. They havnt actually built, let along flown one
    operationally.

  • (Score: 2) by Tara Li on Wednesday January 09 2019, @03:49PM

    by Tara Li (6248) on Wednesday January 09 2019, @03:49PM (#784145)

    Interesting. I was going to comment that this technique might be useful for sources with sufficient brightness, such as planets and asteroids here in the main body of the solar system, but apparently not necessarily from the information given in that slide show. Of course, more and more smaller separated units starts to approximate a solid mirror, but possibly with a commiserate increase in computation to convert the incoming data to usable imagery.