Hank Green gives his take on interstellar flight:
From the caption:
You like space exploration, and we like space exploration. So why aren’t we investigating our closest to galactic neighbor, the triple star system Alpha Centauri? Is it time to give interstellar travel a shot? How would we do it? Hank explains our options, and lays out the challenges. Short version: You’re gonna have to be patient!
This SETI Institute talk combines two amazing developments of our day – the discovery of exoplanets and the development of giant telescopes. Jeff Kuhn of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii gives an excellent presentation (suitable for a wide audience) about The Colossus Project: Designing an optical/IR instrument to detect life outside the solar system:
This talk describes an effort to detect life, and even conduct a planetary census, in our cosmic neighborhood. I’ll describe some results from the Colossus group, an interdisciplinary science and engineering team, working to show how telescopes much larger than the TMT or EELT could be built today by relaxing some of the astronomical requirements of current “world’s largest telescope” projects.
An announcement from Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL):
ESA selects SSTL to design Exoplanet satellite mission
Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) has been selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) for the competitive design phase of CHEOPS science satellite, which will improve mankind’s understanding of exoplanets – planets orbiting distant stars outside our solar system. The contractor selection for the implementation phase is planned by mid-2014 and the launch is scheduled late 2017.
The CHaracterising ExOPlanets Satellite (CHEOPS) will finely characterise known exoplanets and their parent stars with an unprecedented accuracy. The satellite will measure the orbit and radius of those exoplanets, enabling the scientists to assess their potential habitability. The mission will also act as a “scout” performing preliminary observations on targets for the future European Extremely Large Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope that will be capable of more detailed analysis.
CHEOPS was selected from 25 missions proposed in response to ESA Call for Small Missions in 2012, which was targeting innovative small science missions that offer high value at low cost. CHEOPS is jointly developed by ESA and a consortium of Member States led by Switzerland: The Swiss-built instrument using a Ritchey–Chrétien optical telescope will observe the stars and their orbiting planets, while ESA is responsible for the provision of the satellite platform and the launch.
Over the next 10 months SSTL will design the satellite platform, which will host the telescope payload. To provide the mission within a short schedule and at low cost, ESA asked that any solution be based on an existing, flight-proven, satellite platform. SSTL’s solution is based on a variant of the highly successful SSTL-150 platform, which has seen recent service in Canada’s Sapphire space surveillance mission and the 5-satellite RapidEye Earth observation constellation.
In awarding the contract to SSTL, Frederic Safa, Head of Future Missions Office in ESA’s Science and Robotic Exploration Directorate stated: “We chose SSTL for this study for a combination of reasons such as their proven ability to build reliable low-cost missions and their past experience with satellites carrying high-performance optical telescopes.”
SSTL’s Head of Science, Doug Liddle, commented: “We are delighted that ESA selected SSTL to design the CHEOPS mission. We will draw on our experience to design a low cost, but high value solution that will demonstrate that ambitious science missions can be launched both quickly and economically.”
CHEOPS is envisaged as the first in a series of missions in the ESA Science Programme that will utilise small satellites for low cost and rapid development, in order to offer greater flexibility in response to new ideas from the scientific community and complement to the larger missions of ESA’s Science Programme.
About SSTL
Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) is the world’s leading small satellite company, delivering operational space missions for a range of applications including Earth observation, science and communications. The Company designs, manufactures and operates high performance satellites and ground systems for a fraction of the price normally associated with space missions, with 580 staff working on turnkey satellite platforms, space-proven satellite subsystems and optical instruments.
Since 1981 SSTL has built and launched 41 satellites – as well as providing training and development programmes, consultancy services, and mission studies for ESA, NASA, international governments and commercial customers, with its innovative approach that is changing the economics of space.
In 2008 the Company set up a US subsidiary, Surrey Satellite Technology US LLC (SST-US) with facilities in Denver, Colorado to address the United States market and its customers for the provision of small satellite solutions, applications and services. www.sst-us.com
Here’s a very interesting SETI Institute seminar by Olivier Guyon about the possibilities of directly imaging planets in the habitable zones of stars by using coronagraph techniques on telescopes to suppress the glare of the star. Could work with a Hubble size telescope in orbit or with the new giant ground based telescopes coming on line in the next decade or so such as the Giant Magellan Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope.
He also spoke about the citizen science program PANOPTES – “Finding exoplanets with digital cameras” – using the transit technique.
Caption:
Olivier Guyon, University of Arizona and Suburu Telescope, HI
Abstract:
Directly imaging exoplanets is both scientifically exciting but notoriously challenging. Scientifically, obtaining images of rocky planets in the habitable zones of stars is key to finding if and how life developed outside the solar system. Large-scale biological activity can modify the chemical composition of the planet’s atmosphere and its surface properties, both of which can be studied by spectrophotometry. The measurement is however extremely challenging, as the planet light is considerably fainter that the host star’s light, and the angular separation between the two objects is about 0.1 arcsecond or less.Conventional imaging systems cannot overcome the high star to planet contrast, and unusual optics are required for imaging exoplanets. Dr. Guyon will describe such systems (coronagraphs) and the upcoming scientific opportunities associated with their deployment on ground-based telescopes and in space. He will show that ground-based extremely large telescopes (ELTs) will have the ability to directly image and spectroscopically characterize rocky planets in the habitable zones of nearby M-type stars, thus providing scientific evidence for (or against) the presence of life outside our solar system. Space telescopes operating in optical light are well suited to target Earth-like planets around Sun-like stars.
Dr. Guyon will also describe the PANOPTES (Panoptic Astronomical Networked OPtical observatory for Transiting Exoplanet Survey) project, aimed at supporting a world-wide network of small robotic digital cameras built by citizen scientists and schools to identify a large number of transiting exoplanets.
The software OSCAAR/OSCAAR at GitHub allows for small telescopes to observe the transit of an exoplanet across the face of its home star:
The original OSCAAR team at the University of Maryland created OSCAAR because we wanted to observe transiting exoplanets at our small campus observatory, but our faculty and staff at the time had never used our observatory for such observations. We experimented with different observing and analysis techniques until we got our first transit light curve of HD 189733 b in the summer of 2011. We immediately wanted to share what we learned, and in the two years since then we’ve built OSCAAR for use by others like us — with access to basic observing equipment and a drive to observe transiting exoplanets, who need a place to start.
OSCAAR is continuously being enhanced and expanded by an open community of active observers and astronomers. Our contributors today span from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center to the University of Leiden, and observers getting started with OSCAAR reach from Vestal, New York to Athens, Greece. If you’re interested in using or contributing to OSCAAR, we look forward to welcoming you into the community! Don’t be shy to ask how you can get involved! Contributing to OSCAAR makes a great undergraduate research project, for example.
See also Spot Exoplanets With Your Home Telescope, Using Free NASA Software – Popular Science
The new software is called the Open Source differential photometry Code for Accelerating Amateur Research, or OSCAAR for short. OSCAAR measures changes in the brightness of stars. When exoplanets pass between their stars and Earth, they reduce the amount of light that reaches Earth. OSCAAR accounts for the distortion of light that occurs in the Earth’s atmosphere and for changes in light that may occur because there are clouds overhead.
Those who use OSCAAR will likely find giant gas planets orbiting close to their stars. Hot. (Literally.) That’s because such planets are large enough to cause enough change in their stars’ light for amateur equipment to detect. Also, because they’re close to their stars, their orbits are small, swift and measurable over the course of one night.