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European Southern Observatory to Receive Funding From Breakthrough Starshot to Upgrade Telescope

Accepted submission by takyon at 2017-01-10 11:32:36
Science

The Breakthrough Starshot initiative, which is known for its long-term plan for sending chip-sized craft to Alpha Centauri using lasers, will fund an upgrade [arstechnica.com] to the Very Large Telescope [wikipedia.org] in order to search for exoplanets:

Today, the European Southern Observatory announced an agreement with Breakthrough Starshot, A group dedicated to sending hardware to return data from the nearest stars. The agreement would see Breakthrough Starshot fund the development of new hardware that would allow the ESO's Very Large Telescope to become an efficient planet hunter. The goal is presumably to confirm there's something in the Alpha Centauri system worth sending spacecraft to image.

[...] The new hardware will be a modification of existing equipment. The Very Large Telescope is actually four eight-meter telescopes capable of being operated as a single unit. One of these (Unit 3, named "Melipal") has hardware called VISIR [eso.org], for VLT Imager and Spectrometer for mid-Infrared. VISIR can separate infrared light into its component wavelengths, which can tell us something about either the source of the light or any objects in between that absorb light of these wavelengths. Exoplanets turn out to be best to image in the infrared since they often glow with heat, either left over from their formation or due to absorbing light from their host star. But VISIR isn't specialized for planet hunting. For that, it will need a coronagraph, which will blot out the light from the star and make planets easier to spot. VISIR will also need adaptive optics, which can compensate for distortions created by the atmosphere. (The Very Large Telescope may be 2.5km above sea level in a desert, but the atmosphere still poses problems.) And it will likely need additional vibration dampening equipment.

Previously: Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner's $100 Million Interstellar Spacecraft Plan [soylentnews.org]
"Earth-Like" Exoplanet Found in Habitable Zone of Proxima Centauri [soylentnews.org]


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