Follow Us
"Starshade" technology that could help astronomers find and characterize rocky, Earth-like alien worlds was put to the test earlier this year in the Nevada desert.
A starshade, also dubbed an external occulter, is a precisely shaped screen that flies in far-away formations with a space telescope. The device blocks a star's light to create a high-contrast shadow, so that only light from an orbiting exoplanet enters the telescope for detailed study.
While a starshade to hunt alien planets has not been flown before, researchers studying the technique are drawing upon a track record of success in fielding large, deployable antennas in space. Some designs foresee a fully deployed starshade measuring some 110 feet (34 meters) in diameter, with a 65-foot (20 meters) inner disk and 28 outstretched flower-like petals, each over 22 feet (7 meters) in length. Read more...
More about Stars, Astronomy, Telescope, Us World, and Space
0 comments:
Post a Comment