Imaging a habitable planet at Alpha Centauri - Ruslan Belikov (SETI Talks)
Δημοσιεύτηκε στις 26 Οκτ 2015
In
1990, at the request of Carl Sagan, Voyager 1 turned and took a picture
of Earth from a distance of 6 billion kilometers. This produced the
famous “pale blue dot” image of our planet. Several mission concepts are
being studied to obtain similar images of Earth-like exoplanets
(exo-Earths) around other stars. It is commonly thought that directly
imaging a potentially habitable exoplanet requires telescopes with
apertures of at least 1 meter, costing at least $1B, and launching no
earlier than the 2020s. A notable exception to this is Alpha Centauri (A
and B), which is unusually close for a Sun-like star. A ~30-45cm
visible light space telescope equipped with a modern high performance
coronagraph is sufficient to resolve the habitable zone at high contrast
and directly image any potentially habitable planet that may exist in
the system.
Dr. Belikov will describe the challenges involved
with direct imaging of Alpha Centauri planetary systems with a small
telescope and how new technologies currently being developed can solve
them. He will also show examples of small coronagraphic mission concepts
currently being developed to take advantage of this opportunity, and in
particular a mission concept called “ACESat: Alpha Centauri Exoplanet
Sattellite” submitted to NASA’s small Explorer (SMEX) program in
December of 2014.
1990, at the request of Carl Sagan, Voyager 1 turned and took a picture
of Earth from a distance of 6 billion kilometers. This produced the
famous “pale blue dot” image of our planet. Several mission concepts are
being studied to obtain similar images of Earth-like exoplanets
(exo-Earths) around other stars. It is commonly thought that directly
imaging a potentially habitable exoplanet requires telescopes with
apertures of at least 1 meter, costing at least $1B, and launching no
earlier than the 2020s. A notable exception to this is Alpha Centauri (A
and B), which is unusually close for a Sun-like star. A ~30-45cm
visible light space telescope equipped with a modern high performance
coronagraph is sufficient to resolve the habitable zone at high contrast
and directly image any potentially habitable planet that may exist in
the system.
Dr. Belikov will describe the challenges involved
with direct imaging of Alpha Centauri planetary systems with a small
telescope and how new technologies currently being developed can solve
them. He will also show examples of small coronagraphic mission concepts
currently being developed to take advantage of this opportunity, and in
particular a mission concept called “ACESat: Alpha Centauri Exoplanet
Sattellite” submitted to NASA’s small Explorer (SMEX) program in
December of 2014.
Κατηγορία
Άδεια
- Τυπική άδεια YouTube
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