CU: New Space Telescope Could Far Exceed Hubble's Resolution

[bystander]

New space telescope concept could image objects at far higher resolution than Hubble
University of Colorado, Boulder | 2015 Jan 23

[c][attachment=0]Aragoscope.jpg[/attachment][/c]

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University of Colorado Boulder researchers will update NASA officials next week on a revolutionary space telescope concept selected by the agency for study last June that could provide images up to 1,000 times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope.

CU-Boulder Professor Webster Cash said the instrument package would consist of an orbiting space telescope and an opaque disk in front of it that could be up to a half mile across. According to Cash, diffracted light waves from a target star or other space object would bend around the edges of the disk and converge in a central point. That light would then be fed into the orbiting telescope to provide high-resolution images, he said.

The new telescope concept, named the Aragoscope after French scientist Francois Arago who first detected diffracted light waves around a disk, could allow scientists to image space objects like black hole “event horizons” and plasma swaps between stars, said Cash ... The novel telescope system also could point toward Earth and image objects as small as a rabbit, giving it the ability to hunt for lost campers in the mountains, he said. ...

‘Aragoscope’ Offers High Resolution Optics in Space
Centauri Dreams | 2014 Aug 12

Cosmic Concept: Seeing Stellar Weather in Other Galaxies
Popular Mechanics | 2014 July 10

[geckzilla]

Even after reading how it works I don't understand how it works.

[Beyond]

Even after reading how it works I don't understand how it works.

Like a magnifying glass.

[geckzilla]

Even after reading how it works I don't understand how it works.

Like a magnifying glass.

It's a solid disk casting a shadow... that is about as unlike a magnifying glass as possible. Magnifying glasses are for microscopes, not telescopes.

[Beyond]

Even after reading how it works I don't understand how it works.

Like a magnifying glass.

It's a solid disk casting a shadow... that is about as unlike a magnifying glass as possible. Magnifying glasses are for microscopes, not telescopes.

Ok, a better example would be gravitational lensing. At any rate, it takes advantage of light bending around a solid disk and then focuses it.
http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=31294

[Chris Peterson]

Ok, a better example would be gravitational lensing. At any rate, it takes advantage of light bending around a solid disk and then focuses it.

No. There is no lensing, and this device does not form a conventional image at all. It is looking at the structure of the diffracted light to make an inference about a source that must be optically close to a point source. Like the signal from an interferometer (which this instrument bears a relationship to), a complex signal is recorded and mathematically manipulated in order to construct a useful image of some kind. And there are probably useful ways to use that data that don't involve creating an image at all.

[Beyond]

Ok, a better example would be gravitational lensing. At any rate, it takes advantage of light bending around a solid disk and then focuses it.

No. There is no lensing, and this device does not form a conventional image at all. It is looking at the structure of the diffracted light to make an inference about a source that must be optically close to a point source. Like the signal from an interferometer (which this instrument bears a relationship to), a complex signal is recorded and mathematically manipulated in order to construct a useful image of some kind. And there are probably useful ways to use that data that don't involve creating an image at all.

According to the article, the Aragoscope would be a circular opaque disk, whose diffracted light is directed toward a pinhole camera at it's center, then to a telescope that provides extremely high resolution views of stellar objects. It does not mention anything at all about the light being manipulated in any way. Only taking advantage of light bending around a solid object. So where is the mathematical manipulation taking place? To me, it is simply a greater area of light being bent to a focal point the size of a telescope lens, so the telescope is seeing a vastly larger amount of light, for greater resolution.

[Chris Peterson]

According to the article, the Aragoscope would be a circular opaque disk, whose diffracted light is directed toward a pinhole camera at it's center, then to a telescope that provides extremely high resolution views of stellar objects. It does not mention anything at all about the light being manipulated in any way. Only taking advantage of light bending around a solid object. So where is the mathematical manipulation taking place? To me, it is simply a greater area of light being bent to a focal point the size of a telescope lens, so the telescope is seeing a vastly larger amount of light, for greater resolution.

The light is not bent, it is diffracted. And the image formed on the camera will not be an image of the stellar object being imaged, but will be a diffraction pattern that needs to be mathematically converted into a spatial domain image. The camera is seeing much less light than it would see with even a moderate aperture like that of the HST. What is important is that it is collecting light over a very large aperture diameter, which allows for very high resolution. I'd guess that the total light collected from the star might be what you'd get with a conventional telescope you could pick up at a department store.

[Beyond]

According to the article, the Aragoscope would be a circular opaque disk, whose diffracted light is directed toward a pinhole camera at it's center, then to a telescope that provides extremely high resolution views of stellar objects. It does not mention anything at all about the light being manipulated in any way. Only taking advantage of light bending around a solid object. So where is the mathematical manipulation taking place? To me, it is simply a greater area of light being bent to a focal point the size of a telescope lens, so the telescope is seeing a vastly larger amount of light, for greater resolution.

The light is not bent, it is diffracted. And the image formed on the camera will not be an image of the stellar object being imaged, but will be a diffraction pattern that needs to be mathematically converted into a spatial domain image. The camera is seeing much less light than it would see with even a moderate aperture like that of the HST. What is important is that it is collecting light over a very large aperture diameter, which allows for very high resolution. I'd guess that the total light collected from the star might be what you'd get with a conventional telescope you could pick up at a department store.

I could tell by the picture that it is collecting light over a very large area, but then i read the article and got all the rest of it wrong. I'd better stay away from articles.

Hmm... the definition of diffraction is light bending around the edge of an object.

[Chris Peterson]

Hmm... the definition of diffraction is light bending around the edge of an object.

Not really. Diffraction occurs because an edge becomes a new source. Photons don't change direction, rays don't bend. That happens with refraction, but diffraction is different- an interference phenomenon.

[Beyond]

As long as it works good.

[Ann]

Chris wrote:
The light is not bent, it is diffracted.

Somehow I'm reminded of the Large Hadron Collider, which discovers things not by actually imagining them, but by analysing all the stuff that comes out of the particles when they collide... this is probably a lousy analogy.

Would this telescope be able to see blue light and UV light? If so, I would love for it to be built. As some of you know, I don't look forward to the James Webb Telescope quite as much as I probably should, due to the fact that the JWT will not be able to see shortwave optical light and UV light.

Ann

[geckzilla]

Would this telescope be able to see blue light and UV light? If so, I would love for it to be built. As some of you know, I don't look forward to the James Webb Telescope quite as much as I probably should, due to the fact that the JWT will not be able to see shortwave optical light and UV light.

Sure it will. I'm not trying to trick you into liking it but infrared is the only way we can see optical and UV light from the distant Universe. There will be plenty of blue objects to see. They just have to be translated from infrared into the approximate wavelengths they were at when they left their sources. Maybe you should be excited to be able to see the most distant blue light.

[Ann]

Would this telescope be able to see blue light and UV light? If so, I would love for it to be built. As some of you know, I don't look forward to the James Webb Telescope quite as much as I probably should, due to the fact that the JWT will not be able to see shortwave optical light and UV light.

Sure it will. I'm not trying to trick you into liking it but infrared is the only way we can see optical and UV light from the distant Universe. There will be plenty of blue objects to see. They just have to be translated from infrared into the approximate wavelengths they were at when they left their sources. Maybe you should be excited to be able to see the most distant blue light.

Oh, I am!

I'm just thinking that there will be no good telescope that can take a look at nearby galaxies and take better pictures of them than Hubble. In infrared, the nearby ones will look something like this.

Ann

[Chris Peterson]

Chris wrote:
The light is not bent, it is diffracted.

Somehow I'm reminded of the Large Hadron Collider, which discovers discovers things not by actually imagining them, but by analysing all the stuff that comes out of the particles when they collide... this is probably a lousy analogy.

Would this telescope be able to see blue light and UV light? If so, I would love for it to be built. As some of you know, I don't look forward to the James Webb Telescope quite as much as I probably should, due to the fact that the JWT will not be able to see shortwave optical light and UV light.

Not such a bad analogy. Very different math, but the idea that we reconstruct some kind of non-intuitive data into something we are better equipped to understand is the same.

I don't think the telescope is well enough specified to know what wavelengths it would be sensitive to. The occluded aperture operates over a wide range of optical wavelengths, from UV to at least mid-IR (and beyond in both directions, but probably not usefully). So it comes down to the choice of detectors in the camera.

[geckzilla]

I'm just thinking that there will be no good telescope that can take a look at nearby galaxies and take better pictures of them than Hubble. In infrared, the nearby ones will look something like this.

Those dusty structures are breathtaking, though. I can't wait to see how they look to JWST. Hubble will still be up there to complement JWST for a few years after its launch. Spitzer's images would look a lot better if they had greater resolution. GALEX produced some pretty funky looking images, too.

[Ann]

But I loved GALEX, and I miss it so! No other telescope is taking the UV galaxy pictures that GALEX did. Indeed, the resolution was pretty bad, but GALEX revealed so much of the UV-producing structures of galaxies. No other telescope will be doing that, certainly not James Webb.

Ann

[Speculator]

Chris's "... something we are better equipped to understand..." lies at the root of man's problems with understanding .. if we do not try to understand from our understanding, but from physical realities, and using imagination, as Einstein did, we would progress in every field very rapidly. But if our foundation of understanding is our understanding, which is always flawed, we will stagnate, as every field of human endeavour had done throughout history.

[BDanielMayfield]

Chris's "... something we are better equipped to understand..." lies at the root of man's problems with understanding .. if we do not try to understand from our understanding, but from physical realities, and using imagination, as Einstein did, we would progress in every field very rapidly. But if our foundation of understanding is our understanding, which is always flawed, we will stagnate, as every field of human endeavour had done throughout history.

We must always build up from what we know, or at least, what we think we know. True, at times what is thought to be true really isn't, but more information and new ways of examining the data lead to breakthroughs that give us a more correct understanding of reality.

Bruce

[Speculator]

Chris's "... something we are better equipped to understand..." lies at the root of man's problems with understanding .. if we do not try to understand from our understanding, but from physical realities, and using imagination, as Einstein did, we would progress in every field very rapidly. But if our foundation of understanding is our understanding, which is always flawed, we will stagnate, as every field of human endeavour had done throughout history.

We must always build up from what we know, or at least, what we think we know. True, at times what is thought to be true really isn't, but more information and new ways of examining the data lead to breakthroughs that give us a more correct understanding of reality.

Bruce

You got it right, Bruce, when you write, "...or at least, what we think we know." Problem is, 'what we think we know' becomes 'what we know' through the power of Establishment Consensus which does away with the 'what if what we think we know is really not what is?' That question left to the 'ignorant and unlearned' who are then often viciously attacked when what they think they know contradicts what the Establishment Consensus 'knows,' and thus our minds and our evidences are attacked as invalid and lunatic, at least, until someone in the Establishment Consensus announces his or her own 'breakthrough' stolen from those ignorant and unlearned.

[Chris Peterson]

You got it right, Bruce, when you write, "...or at least, what we think we know." Problem is, 'what we think we know' becomes 'what we know' through the power of Establishment Consensus which does away with the 'what if what we think we know is really not what is?'

Utter nonsense. Consensus is one of the most important aspects of the scientific method and of what makes modern science so effective at expanding knowledge. Without consensus, there is no mechanism to keep focus on avenues of research that are likely to be right, as opposed to all the many possible false avenues.

[geckzilla]

The people issuing vicious attacks are often doing so out of their own sense of insecurity, though. In other words, they don't know as much as they think they do. Not enough to feel comfortable around someone expressing an unconventional idea. It's hardly normative in the scientific community. Of course, some dangerously wrong ideas (anti-vaccine movement, for example) deserve vigorous condemnation.

[Speculator]

The people issuing vicious attacks are often doing so out of their own sense of insecurity, though. In other words, they don't know as much as they think they do. Not enough to feel comfortable around someone expressing an unconventional idea. It's hardly normative in the scientific community. Of course, some dangerously wrong ideas (anti-vaccine movement, for example) deserve vigorous condemnation.

Chris's "utter nonsense" and your "deserves vigorous condemnation" geckzilla are vicious attacks .. so the attitudes of you both are obvious. For instance, one-third of the population of U.S. and Canada now expire from cancer, and of course some will say that is a result of people living longer due to vaccines, but the many cancers among the very young as well as age groups which should not generally be dying of cancers contradict that thought. Consensus does concentrates research it is true, to the detriment of alternative theory often found to be much more plausible than the consensus .. leading to the continued flat earth society.

[rstevenson]

To which I can only reply...

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Rob

[geckzilla]

The people issuing vicious attacks are often doing so out of their own sense of insecurity, though. In other words, they don't know as much as they think they do. Not enough to feel comfortable around someone expressing an unconventional idea. It's hardly normative in the scientific community. Of course, some dangerously wrong ideas (anti-vaccine movement, for example) deserve vigorous condemnation.

Chris's "utter nonsense" and your "deserves vigorous condemnation" geckzilla are vicious attacks .. so the attitudes of you both are obvious.

It is a widely shared attitude at this forum; not just the domain of Chris and myself. We have many lively disagreements here but we do all agree on one thing and it is the rule of this land: We embrace mainstream science at this forum in all of its forms and anti-science sentiments will be squelched. If you find yourself in strong disagreement with mainstream science and think it is your duty to convince us your way is better, then please leave. It's not now and it won't ever be acceptable here.