Seeing the Future with Imaging Science Interdisciplinary Research Team Summaries (2011) / Chapter Skim
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IDR Team Summary 4: Develop a telescope or starshade that would allow planetary systems around neighboring stars to be imaged.
IDR Team Summary 4: Develop a telescope or starshade that would allow planetary systems around neighboring stars to be imaged.
Pages 53-60
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From page 53... ...
Low-resolution spectra of a number of planets have also been found using the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and a few ground-based observatories; in these cases, the planets have been objects unlike anything in our solar system, being mostly Jupiter-like planets in Mercury-like orbits. Images of several planetary systems have also been collected from the ground and space; these have shown planets in orbits much wider than even the bounds of our solar system and with planetary companions of extreme size, 3–20 times Jupiter's mass.
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From page 54... ...
Beyond angular resolution limitations, a more difficult challenge is that planets are extremely faint as compared to the stars around which they orbit. An Earth-like planet would be about 10 billion times fainter than a Sun-like star when viewed at optical wavelengths, albeit somewhat brighter at infrared wavelengths -- then only a factor of 10 million fainter.
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From page 55... ...
Since the late 1950s, radio astronomers have used arrays of radio telescopes for synthesis imaging, realizing that it would never be possible to build steerable telescopes larger than about 100 m (such as the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia) , nor fixed telescopes larger than ~300 m (the extreme example being Cornell's Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico)
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From page 56... ...
Ann Rev Astron Astrophys 2009;47:253-89. Abstract accessed online June 15, 2010.
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From page 57... ...
As a result, team 4 decided to reframe the challenge of imaging extrasolar planets in a more topical way in the hopes that they might make more progress instead of rehashing existing information. The new question is: "How do we apply imaging science to detect and characterize exoplanets?
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From page 58... ...
A space telescope is one way to get around turbulence, but such instruments are very expensive and pose their own engineering challenges. Another method is through the use of adaptive optics (AO)
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From page 59... ...
This auxiliary data could hold the key to developing a better image processing algorithm. Lastly, it's worth considering how improved imaging could inform hardware decisions for future instruments.
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