Anyone have any revolutionary ideas on building a telescope that can image planets in other solar systems?
At the rate they are going we are never going to see exo planets, its time we figure out a whole new way of collecting light
Very Large Telescope Interferometers are already being built and tested even as you ask that question. See links. Such telescope arrays are capable of optically resolving Jupiter-sized planets at distances of 10 parsecs. Theres is no reason why further improvement in visible light acuity cannot be achieved, particularly with proposals for telescope arrays in space. We should someday be able to view extrasolar planets with the same clarity as we view our own planets from Earth with ordinary telescopes.
The basic idea behind such telescope interferometer arrays is to create a "synthetic aperture" far larger than any one single telescope can practically by built. In optics, resolving power is limited by the width of the aperture, not the area, so the idea is to have a wide array of telescopes which light is collected and combined inteferometrically to produce sharp images.
Solar Telescope
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£12.99
