NASA Takes Step Forward In Planet Finding

Spy der Mann wrote to mention a piece at Physorg.com about a major breakthrough in planet finding. From the article: "On a crystal clear, star-filled night at Hawaii's Keck Observatory in Mauna Kea, NASA engineers successfully suppressed the blinding light of three stars, including the well-known Vega, by 100 times. This breakthrough will enable scientists to detect the dim dust disks around stars, where planets might be forming. Normally the disks are obscured by the glare of the starlight. Engineers accomplished this challenging feat with the Keck Interferometer, which links the observatory's two 10-meter (33-feet) telescopes. By combining light from the telescopes, the Keck Interferometer has a resolving power equivalent to a football-field sized telescope. The 'technological touchdown' of blocking starlight was achieved by adding an instrument called a 'nuller.' "

Comments

Re:Awww....

[Zzyzygy]

It is a good father-son hobby. I built my own 8" newtonian about 27 years ago, dad and I spent a lot of time grinding the mirror, heading down to Meade to buy parts, eyepieces, an equatorial mount, etc. I learned more about my father during that nine month project than I had in my previous sixteen years of existence on this ball of dirt we call the earth.

We had many years of eyepiece time enjoying and documenting our observations

I still have that telescope, and I think of my recently-departed father whenver I use it.

Oh, yeah, we both learned early on not to drink and grind optics. :-)

-Scott

Re:Let's get the instruments in space

[Uosdwis]

There are instruments. From the Great Observatories and the Cosmic Origins projects. The problem though is that it took nearly 25 years for Spitzer to get off the ground and into orbit. The total life time cost is around $1.5 billion. $640-750 million for the satellite and then about roughly the same to run it. It only talks through the DSN which makes things extremly expensive. DI has one of the largetst telescopes that went to 'deep' space and that wan't cheap either. Right now it is on itsway back to earth and a parking orbit. Other than that no science being done. Why? Money. Once again running on the DSN, takes a lot of cash. The former runs at 20MHz and the latter about 115MHz. One uses flash the other didn't 'cause there was no rad-hard flash during design. The tech on the planet is not that same that can be used in space reliably. Forget about all of those assumptions in your calculation you better have the modeling down otherwise you're fscked.

So really the cost is a prohibiting factor as is the technology, not the desire to have telescopes in space.

Re:Interferometer?

[tsm_sf]

Can this be programmed into cheap telescopes for well known light sources?

Is this the answer to light pollution?

I'm guessing that the answer is "no" and "no", respectively, but I'd be interested to find out why not.