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Direct Imaging and Spectroscopy of an Exoplanet with a Solar Gravity Lens

arxiv.org

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Re: Direct Imaging and Spectroscopy of an Exoplanet with a Solar Gravity Lens

#2

Post by pizza »

Related projects [0]

Imaging With Nature: Planet Sized Sensors (July 24th, 2010)

Imaging With Nature: A Cloud Based Sun Imager (July 25th, 2010)

A Galaxy Wide Single Pixel Camera (November 6th, 2010)

[0] https://sites.google.com/site/igorcarron/thesetechdonotexist

Re: Direct Imaging and Spectroscopy of an Exoplanet with a Solar Gravity Lens

#3

Post by nategri »

This is insanely cool. I had no idea this was possible.

If I'm reading right the spacecraft would have to be placed at about 600-850 AU from the sun to take advantage of the solar gravity lens. For reference, Pluto's orbit is located at (roughly) 40 AU.

Re: Direct Imaging and Spectroscopy of an Exoplanet with a Solar Gravity Lens

#4

Post by coldnose »

This sounds like moonshot-level complexity. It invokes solar sails, laser communication at 550 AU, as well as "advanced propulsion, lightweight telescopes, membrane mirrors, inflatable/rigidizeable structures, and novel coronagraphic techniques." All that for a telescope you can't aim...

Re: Direct Imaging and Spectroscopy of an Exoplanet with a Solar Gravity Lens

#5

Post by Scaevolus »

pizza wrote: post #2

Related projects [0] Imaging With Nature: Planet Sized Sensors (July 24th, 2010) Imaging With Nature: A Cloud Based Sun Imager (July 25th, 2010) A Galaxy Wide Single Pixel Camera (November 6th, 2010) [0] https://sites.google.com/site/igorcarron/thesetechdonotexist

Using the sun as a gravitational lens is our current best option for interstellar communications, presuming we settled a planet within a hundred light years:

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2009/11/06/the-gravitational...

Re: Direct Imaging and Spectroscopy of an Exoplanet with a Solar Gravity Lens

#6

Post by nerfhammer »

nategri wrote: post #3

This is insanely cool. I had no idea this was possible. If I'm reading right the spacecraft would have to be placed at about 600-850 AU from the sun to take advantage of the solar gravity lens. For reference, Pluto's orbit is located at (roughly) 40 AU.

could we use New Horizons to do it? ...I suppose not, it's taken 10 years for it to go 40AU so for it to go to 400AU it would take 100 years...

Re: Direct Imaging and Spectroscopy of an Exoplanet with a Solar Gravity Lens

#7

Post by IntronExon »

coldnose wrote: post #4

This sounds like moonshot-level complexity. It invokes solar sails, laser communication at 550 AU, as well as "advanced propulsion, lightweight telescopes, membrane mirrors, inflatable/rigidizeable structures, and novel coronagraphic techniques." All that for a telescope you can't aim...

Moonshot x Manhattan Project with a dash of Star Trek. Basically we need the next few generations of novel materials, and controlled fusion reactions. Assuming no major setbacks for humans, we’d need more than a century before considering this kind of project. It would be a worthy project, although I wonder if some other tech might not supersede it by the time this was ready? Gravitational astronomy is just getting started after all, and who knows, maybe the dream of neutrino astronomy could happen.

Re: Direct Imaging and Spectroscopy of an Exoplanet with a Solar Gravity Lens

#8

Post by mturmon »

This is the workshop where some of these ideas were discussed: http://kiss.caltech.edu/workshops/ism/ism.html There appear to be several groups working on related designs for gravity-based imagers.

One of the three organizers of the workshop is Ed Stone, who is the Voyager PI.

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