Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday January 10 2018, @02:37AM   Printer-friendly
from the I-can-see-clearly-now dept.

To improve the ability of telescopes to directly image exoplanets, rather than blocking light using a coronagraph, deformable mirrors could be used to bounce photons from different light sources into different sensors. The "multi-star wavefront control" method could help account for multiple light sources, which is useful for binary stars and other multiple star systems which are common in our galaxy:

Technology in development could capture images from an Earth-size planet in the nearby Alpha Centauri system in the 2020s, new research suggests. The new technique, presented Dec. 15 at the American Geophysical Union's annual meeting in New Orleans, could also help researchers see exoplanets in other systems with more than one star.

[...] Although scientists could conceivably use more than one coronagraph to block out the light from all the stars in a multiple system, tiny imperfections within the components of a telescope would inevitably cause light to leak through a coronagraph, Belikov said. "This light is only a small fraction of the original star's light but can still overwhelm planets, which are much fainter still," he told Space.com.Belikov and his colleagues have developed a way to get around that issue and image exoplanets in multiple-star systems.

[...] The new method the researchers have devised, known as the multi-star wavefront control, relies on deformable mirrors within telescopes that are used to bounce light from stars and planets onto sensors. These mirrors can alter the shape of their surfaces to correct for imperfections within the optical components of telescopes.

[...] A major advantage of this new system "is that it is compatible with many already-designed instruments," Belikov said. "A deformable mirror is all that's needed, which is almost always present with modern coronagraphs." Ideally, "we hope to infuse our technology into future space telescopes to enable them to target Alpha Centauri and other binaries," Belikov said. "These range from small telescopes like ACESat or Project Blue that can be launched in the early 2020s, WFIRST in the mid-2020s, and LUVOIR or HabEx in the 2030s. There are also telescopes on the ground that can use this technology."

Also at ExtremeTech.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 10 2018, @01:12PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 10 2018, @01:12PM (#620450)

    deform-able mirror this, deform-able mirror that.

    the links just link text spaghetti and a "artists rendering".
    one would think that there would be a actual picture or at least a schematic of this so-called deform-able mirror?

    because, some people might think, that mirrors are suddenly deform-able, maybe like silver-nitrate
    in a parabolic dish that can be tilted and the liquid swirl-es inside the parabola surface ... when in reality it is
    a mirror made up of lots of tiny mirror and each tiny-mirror has an actuator ... or what or how?

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 10 2018, @03:29PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 10 2018, @03:29PM (#620487)

    Some mirrors are made up of actuated parts, like the Keck, but smaller deformable mirrors are made up of a semi-rigid reflective surface behind which are a number of linear actuators, or pistons, that act like little poking fingers behind the mirror. When the actuators push on the back of the mirror, it bends the mirror locally.