Hypertelescope camera captures ‘unprecedented detail’ of celestial objects
Image credit: Association Hypertelescope LISE
French researchers have designed a new camera that could allow hypertelescopes to capture images of multiple stars simultaneously and with greater detail.
The enhanced telescope design, developed by researchers from the Collège de France in Paris and Observatoire de la Cote d’Azur (Nice Observatory), holds the potential to obtain extremely high-resolution images of objects outside our solar system, such as planets, pulsars, globular clusters and distant galaxies.
“A multi-field hypertelescope could, in principle, capture a highly detailed image of a star, possibly also showing its planets and even the details of the planets’ surfaces,” said Antoine Labeyrie, emeritus professor at the university and the observatory, who pioneered the hypertelescope design. “It could allow planets outside of our solar system to be seen with enough detail that spectroscopy could be used to search for evidence of photosynthetic life.”
A report published in the journal Optics Letters described optical modelling results stating that the multi-field design can substantially extend the narrow field-of-view coverage of hypertelescopes developed thus far. It envisions small devices placed in proximity, with computers joining images and offering superior resolution, the researchers said.
Large optical telescopes use a concave mirror to focus light from celestial sources. Although larger mirrors can produce more detailed pictures because of their reduced diffractive spreading of the light beam, there is a limit to how large these mirrors can be made. Hypertelescopes are designed to overcome this size limitation by using large arrays of mirrors, which can be spaced widely apart.
A new multi-field hypertelescope design could image multiple stars at once with high resolution. Hypertelescopes use large arrays of mirrors with space between them. This multi-field design could be incorporated into the hypertelescope prototype currently being tested in the French Alps.
Image credit: Antoine Labeyrie, Collège de France and Observatoire de la Cote d'Azur
Researchers have previously experimented with relatively small prototype hypertelescope designs, and a full-size version is currently under construction in the French Alps. In the new work, researchers used computer models to create a design that would give hypertelescopes a much larger field of view. This design could be implemented on Earth, in a crater of the Moon or even on an extremely large scale in space.
Building a hypertelescope in space, however, would require a large flotilla of small mirrors spaced out to form a very large concave mirror, the researchers said. This large mirror would focus light from a star or other celestial objects and direct it to a separate, camera-equipped spacecraft.
“The multi-field design is a rather modest addition to the optical system of a hypertelescope, but should greatly enhance its capabilities,” said Labeyrie. “A final version deployed in space could have a diameter ten times larger than the Earth and could be used to reveal details of extremely small objects such as the Crab pulsar, a neutron star believed to be only 20km in size.”
The Hypertelescope system allows to install and operate several optical devices at the same time over the same telescope mirror. It permits to practice as much simultaneous observations of different objects in the sky with exactly the same technical specifications. In practice, each optical device will add a new telescope to a telescope already built at a reduced cost.
Image credit: Antoine Labeyrie Collège de France & Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur
Hypertelescopes use what is known as pupil densification to concentrate light collection to form high-resolution images. This process, however, greatly limits the field of view for hypertelescopes, preventing the formation of images of diffuse or large objects such as a globular star cluster, exoplanetary system or galaxy.
The researchers also developed a micro-optical system that can be used with the focal camera of the hypertelescope to simultaneously generate separate images of each field of interest. For star clusters, this makes it possible to obtain separate images of each of thousands of stars simultaneously.
The proposed multi-field design can be thought of as an instrument made of multiple independent hypertelescopes, each with a differently tilted optical axis that gives it a unique imaging field, the team in France said. These independent telescopes focus adjacent images onto a single camera sensor.
The researchers used optical simulation software to model different implementations of a multi-field hypertelescope. These all provided accurate results that confirmed the feasibility of multi-field observations.
They said, however, that incorporating the multi-field addition into hypertelescope prototypes would require developing new components, including adaptive optics components to correct residual optical imperfections in the off-axis design.
Meanwhile, the researchers are continuing to develop alignment techniques and control software so that the new camera can be used with the prototype in the Alps. They have also developed a similar design for a Moon-based version.
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