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Can someone explain to me how we can use a telescope to observe for the presence of Phosphine?

• _Microft 6y ago
  They collect light, split it into its colors and check for certain colors being more or less present or absent. This is a so called spectrum and different atoms, ions and molecules have a characteristic pattern there. Here is what this looks like when doing this with light of the sun: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraunhofer_lines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraunhofer_lines
  • raducu 6y ago
    And why haven't we checked this before on Venus?
    • saberdancer 6y ago
      I'm sure it has been checked. This effect is not strong and they probably needed to "aim" for a specific part of Venus. Also newer telescopes and data analysis methods may be able to see the effect when before it would be lost in the noise.
    • TheGallopedHigh 6y ago
      Could be a number of reasons. Most likely of which could be technological.
    • tannhauser23 6y ago
      From the article: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dUWrpm80WHsJ:https://earthsky.org/%3Fp%3D343883+ https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dUWrpm... "This was an experiment made out of pure curiosity, really, taking advantage of JCMT’s powerful technology, and thinking about future instruments. I thought we’d just be able to rule out extreme scenarios, like the clouds being stuffed full of organisms. When we got the first hints of phosphine in Venus’ spectrum, it was a shock!"