coronagraph Archives

July 31, 2024July 31, 2024 by Andy Tomaswick

How to SUPPPPRESS Light From a Star That Is Ten Billion Times Brighter Than Its Habitable Exoplanet

This artist’s concept features one of multiple initial possible design options for NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory. Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab

Searching for Earth 2.0 has been an obsession of almost all exoplanet hunters since the discipline’s dawn a few decades ago. Since then, they’ve had plenty of technological breakthroughs help them in their quest, but so far, none of them have been capable of providing the clear-cut image needed to prove the existence of an exo-Earth. However, some of those technologies are undoubtedly getting closer, and one of the most interesting is utilizing a system called a multi-grated vector vortex coronagraph (mgVVC). Researchers funded by ESA think it may hold the optical properties to enable space-based telescopes like the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) to finally capture the holy grail of exoplanet hunting – and it may be ready for prime time as early as next year.

July 27, 2024July 27, 2024 by Evan Gough

Webb Directly Images a Jupiter-Like Planet

The gas-giant exoplanet Epsilon Indi Ab imaged using the MIRI instrument on NASA’s Webb telescope. A star symbol marks the location of the host star, whose light has been blocked by MIRI’s coronagraph, resulting in the dark circle with a dashed white line. The planet is to the left of the star. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, E. Matthews (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy)

The JWST has directly imaged its first exoplanet, a temperate super Jupiter only about 12 light-years away from Earth. It could be the oldest and coldest planet ever detected.

June 3, 2024June 3, 2024 by Andy Tomaswick

Suppressing Starlight: How to Find Other Earths

One underappreciated aspect of the current flood of exoplanet discoveries is the technical marvels that enable it. Scientists and engineers must capture and detect minute signals from stars and planets light years away. With the technologies of even a few decades ago, that would have been impossible – now it seems commonplace. However, there are still some technical hurdles to overcome before finding the “holy grail” of exoplanet hunting – an Earth analog. To help that discussion, a team of researchers led by Bertrand Mennesson at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has released a paper detailing the current experimental and theoretical work around one of the most critical technical aspects of researching exoplanet atmospheres – starshades.

March 31, 2024March 31, 2024 by Mark Thompson

The Search for the Perfect Coronagraph to Find Earth 2.0

Coronagraph allowing the direct imaging of exoplanets

Studying exoplanets is made more difficult by the light from the host star. Coronagraphs are devices that block out the star light and both JWST and Nancy Grace Roman Telescope are equipped with them. Current coronagraphs are not quite capable of seeing other Earths but work is underway to push the limits of technology and even science for a new, more advanced device. A new paper explores the quantum techniques that may one day allow us to make such observations.

October 27, 2023October 27, 2023 by Evan Gough

JWST Sees Four Exoplanets in a Single System

This artist’s rendering shows the star HR 8799 and one of its four planets, HR 8799c. It illustrates the system at an early stage of evolution. It also shows the star's dusty disk and rocky inner planets. Credit: Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics

When the JWST activated its penetrating infrared eyes in July 2022, it faced a massive wish-list of targets compiled by an eager international astronomy community. Distant, early galaxies, nascent planets forming in dusty disks, and the end of the Universe’s dark ages and its first light were on the list. But exoplanets were also on the list, and there were thousands of them beckoning to be studied.

But one distant solar system stood out: HR 8799, a system about 133 light-years away.

September 14, 2023September 14, 2023 by Laurence Tognetti

Planning is Underway for NASA’s Next Big Flagship Space Telescope

Artist rendition of a starshade being used on a future space telescope. This example shows the proposed Habitable Exoplanet Observatory (HabEx), which the 2020 Astrophysics Decadal Survey decided to combine elements of this with the Large Ultraviolet Optical Infrared Surveyor (LUVOIR) for a new flagship telescope, which is now known as the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO). (Credit: NASA)

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has only been operational for just over a year, but this isn’t stopping the world’s biggest space agency from discussing the next big space telescope that could serve as JWST’s successor sometime in the future. Enter the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), which was first proposed as NASA’s next flagship Astrophysics mission during the National Academy of Sciences’ Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics 2020 (Astro2020). While its potential technological capabilities include studying exoplanets, stars, galaxies, and a myriad of other celestial objects for life beyond Earth, there’s a long way to go before HWO will be wowing both scientists and the public with breathtaking images and new datasets.

September 7, 2023September 7, 2023 by Evan Gough

A Last-Minute Addition to the Solar Orbiter Allows it to See More Deeply into the Sun’s Atmosphere

A clever astronomer made a last minute hack to the Solar Orbiter's Extreme Ultraviolet Imager, allowing it to capture better images. Image Credit: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI Team; F. Auchère et al (2023); Solar disc: NASA/STEREO

Spacecraft instruments are highly specialized and can take years to design, build, and test. But a last-minute hack to one of the instruments on the ESA’s Solar Orbiter has allowed the spacecraft to take some difficult observations it would otherwise have been unable to take.

It’s all because of one astronomer and an instrument door.

January 27, 2023January 27, 2023 by Evan Gough

It’s Already Hard Enough to Block a Single Star’s Light to See its Planets. But Binary Stars? Yikes

Binary stars are common and imaging their planets will be a challenge. How can astronomers block all that light so they can see the planets? This artist's illustration shows the eclipsing binary star Kepler 16, as seen from the surface of an exoplanet in the system. Image Credit: NASA

Detecting exoplanets was frontier science not long ago. But now we’ve found over 5,000 of them, and we expect to find them around almost every star. The next step is to characterize these planets more fully in hopes of finding ones that might support life. Directly imaging them will be part of that effort.

But to do that, astronomers need to block out the light from the planets’ stars. That’s challenging in binary star systems.

January 18, 2023January 18, 2023 by Evan Gough

By Blocking the Light From a Star, Webb Reveals the Dusty Disk Surrounding It

These coronagraphic images of a disk around the star AU Microscopii, captured by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), show compass arrows, scale bar, and color key for reference. Image Credit: SCIENCE: NASA, ESA, CSA, Kellen Lawson (NASA-GSFC), Joshua E. Schlieder (NASA-GSFC) IMAGE PROCESSING: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

AU Microscopii is a small red dwarf star about 32 light-years away. It’s far too dim for the unaided human eye, but that doesn’t diminish its appeal. The star has at least two exoplanets and hosts a circumstellar debris disk.

It’s also young, only about 23 million years old, and it’s the second-closest pre-main sequence star to Earth. The JWST recently imaged the star and its surroundings and found something surprising.

March 21, 2022March 21, 2022 by Evan Gough

Dust Might Reveal the Presence of Habitable Planets

Artist's conceptualization of the dusty TYC 8241 2652 system as it might have appeared several years ago when it was emitting large amounts of excess infrared radiation. Credit: Gemini Observatory/AURA artwork by Lynette Cook. https://www.gemini.edu/node/11836

NASA’s next great space telescope should launch no later than 2027. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is a powerful wide-field infrared telescope that will create panoramic fields of view 100 times greater than Hubble’s. The Roman Telescope has a variety of scientific objectives, and one of its jobs is to complete a census of exoplanets to answer questions around habitability.

A new study shows how the Roman Space Telescope can measure the dust in distant solar systems to help find habitable planets.