Giant Space Daisy Star Shield Scope May Be Pregnant (with a new baby telescope)

phys.org...

In April, NIAC will select six of the 2014 Phase One concepts for Phase Two funding, which is a two-year, $500,000 award. In 2004 and 2005, Cash was awarded Phase One and Phase Two funding for a concept of a telescope and a giant, daisy-shaped "starshade" that would block light from a parent star and let light from its planets to leak around the edges, allowing the team to image them. In 2008 NASA awarded Cash and his team an additional $1 million to further the New Worlds starshade study

these things are huge; but a disk is a less complex shape than a daisy. this thing can see a bunny rabbit on the surface of earth from space and is many times more powerful than hubble.

Wow, that's quite a revolutionary technique, never heard of this before.

So, they're basically gonna be using the disc as a light-gathering "telescope", while observing the diffracted light with a smaller telescope.

There's even a NASA article: www.nasa.gov...

originally posted by: wildespace
Wow, that's quite a revolutionary technique, never heard of this before.

So, they're basically gonna be using the disc as a light-gathering "telescope", while observing the diffracted light with a smaller telescope.

There's even a NASA article: www.nasa.gov...

cool story: it works like this:

forums.familyfriendpoems.com...

so it's something you can check out for yourself

how cool is that?

my computer needs a little "attitude adjustment."

sorry about the double post.

originally posted by: stormbringer1701
phys.org...

In April, NIAC will select six of the 2014 Phase One concepts for Phase Two funding, which is a two-year, $500,000 award. In 2004 and 2005, Cash was awarded Phase One and Phase Two funding for a concept of a telescope and a giant, daisy-shaped "starshade" that would block light from a parent star and let light from its planets to leak around the edges, allowing the team to image them. In 2008 NASA awarded Cash and his team an additional $1 million to further the New Worlds starshade study

these things are huge; but a disk is a less complex shape than a daisy. this thing can see a bunny rabbit on the surface of earth from space and is many times more powerful than hubble.

A disk is not effective as an occulter that's why it is shaped like a daisy because light leaks out around the edge of a disk.

EDIT: I just read the original article the disk shape talked about in the article is not being used as a starshade in the aragoscope. The starshade and aragoscope are two different ideas for two different kinds of science. The starshade benefits exoplanet research while the aragoscope benefits stuff like black hole and neutron star research.



So it's not an either/or. It's more likely both get built. The starshade mission planning (called Exo-S) is already well underway. The aragoscope would be pretty useless for exoplanets but very useful for other types of objects.

originally posted by: JadeStar

originally posted by: stormbringer1701
phys.org...

In April, NIAC will select six of the 2014 Phase One concepts for Phase Two funding, which is a two-year, $500,000 award. In 2004 and 2005, Cash was awarded Phase One and Phase Two funding for a concept of a telescope and a giant, daisy-shaped "starshade" that would block light from a parent star and let light from its planets to leak around the edges, allowing the team to image them. In 2008 NASA awarded Cash and his team an additional $1 million to further the New Worlds starshade study

these things are huge; but a disk is a less complex shape than a daisy. this thing can see a bunny rabbit on the surface of earth from space and is many times more powerful than hubble.

A disk is not effective as an occulter that's why it is shaped like a daisy because light leaks out around the edge of a disk.

EDIT: I just read the original article the disk shape talked about in the article is not being used as a starshade in the aragoscope. The starshade and aragoscope are two different ideas for two different kinds of science. The starshade benefits exoplanet research while the aragoscope benefits stuff like black hole and neutron star research.



So it's not an either/or. It's more likely both get built. The starshade mission planning (called Exo-S) is already well underway. The aragoscope would be pretty useless for exoplanets but very useful for other types of objects.

yeah; that's what i am saying. the edge of the disk acts like a lens. simple and clever.

Sorry. Double post
See post below.

Wow. This is the first time I've heard of an Aragoscope, and the first time I've ever heard about this optical effect of the diffracted light at the edges of a disk.

I'm really trying to wrap my brain around the optical phenomenon that makes this work. It just seems counter-intuitive that you would be able to resolve an object better by blocking your view of that object with an opaque disk -- although that's what seems to be going on. Here is the explanation of the optical phenomenon that seems to make the most sense to me:

The opaque disk of the Aragoscope works in a similar way to a basic lens,...The light diffracted around the edge of the circular disk travels the same path length to the center and comes into focus as an image. Since image resolution increases with telescope diameter, being able to launch such a large, yet lightweight disk would allow astronomers to achieve higher-resolution images than with smaller, traditional space telescopes.

So (and somebody who understands the optics of this please help me here), is the reason that the light is bent/diffracted around the edge of the disk anything similar to the reason that light is bent/diffracted in something like a single-slit experiment, as in the graphic below, (i.e., are the light waves being bent at the edge of the slit similar to the diffraction at the edge of the disk?)?

originally posted by: Soylent Green Is People
Wow. This is the first time I've heard of an Aragoscope, and the first time I've ever heard about this optical effect of the diffracted light at the edges of a disk.

I'm really trying to wrap my brain around the optical phenomenon that makes this work. It just seems counter-intuitive that you would be able to resolve an object better by blocking your view of that object with an opaque disk -- although that's what seems to be going on. Here is the explanation of the optical phenomenon that seems to make the most sense to me:

The opaque disk of the Aragoscope works in a similar way to a basic lens,...The light diffracted around the edge of the circular disk travels the same path length to the center and comes into focus as an image. Since image resolution increases with telescope diameter, being able to launch such a large, yet lightweight disk would allow astronomers to achieve higher-resolution images than with smaller, traditional space telescopes.

So (and somebody who understands the optics of this please help me here), is the reason that the light is bent/diffracted around the edge of the disk anything similar to the reason that light is bent/diffracted in something like a single-slit experiment, as in the graphic below, (i.e., are the light waves being bent at the edge of the slit similar to the diffraction at the edge of the disk?)?

yes. the rules of optics/refraction/defraction etc... apply around any interface/boundary. even edges. this even happens in open space if somehow there were two adjacent regions of empty space that had different densities too.

originally posted by: Soylent Green Is People
Wow. This is the first time I've heard of an Aragoscope, and the first time I've ever heard about this optical effect of the diffracted light at the edges of a disk.

I'm really trying to wrap my brain around the optical phenomenon that makes this work. It just seems counter-intuitive that you would be able to resolve an object better by blocking your view of that object with an opaque disk -- although that's what seems to be going on. Here is the explanation of the optical phenomenon that seems to make the most sense to me:

The opaque disk of the Aragoscope works in a similar way to a basic lens,...The light diffracted around the edge of the circular disk travels the same path length to the center and comes into focus as an image. Since image resolution increases with telescope diameter, being able to launch such a large, yet lightweight disk would allow astronomers to achieve higher-resolution images than with smaller, traditional space telescopes.

So (and somebody who understands the optics of this please help me here), is the reason that the light is bent/diffracted around the edge of the disk anything similar to the reason that light is bent/diffracted in something like a single-slit experiment, as in the graphic below, (i.e., are the light waves being bent at the edge of the slit similar to the diffraction at the edge of the disk?)?

yes. the rules of optics/refraction/defraction etc... apply around any interface/boundary. even edges. this even happens in open space if somehow there were two adjacent regions of empty space that had different densities too.