3 ms·
That will be done with a solar gravitational lens - there's a recent-ish NASA paper about it. Basically you send your probe to > 550 AU in the opposite directio
by cryptoz 1y ago
That will be done with a solar gravitational lens - there's a recent-ish NASA paper about it. Basically you send your probe to > 550 AU in the opposite direction of your target exoplanet, point it at the Sun and you will get a warped high-res photo of the planet around the Sun. You can then algorithmically decode it into a regular photo.
I think the transit time is likely decades and the build time is also a long time as well. But in maybe 40-100 years we could have plentiful HD images of 'nearby' exoplanets. If I'm still around when it happens I will be beyond hyped.
- dylan604 1y agothis is one of those where a missed alignment is going to be a huge bummer. 550AU * arcseconds is a long way off looking not at what you wanted. you wouldn't know until you were at minimum distance which is going to take generations to achieve. voyager 1 is only ~166AU and that was >40 years. so if you try to nudge your coarse, how many more generations would it be before it was aligned correctly?
- umeshunni 1y agoan arcsecond at 550AU is "only" 400,125 km. So, in theory, it's correctable in days.
- sanxiyn 1y agoFYI: Direct Multipixel Imaging and Spectroscopy of an Exoplanet with a Solar Gravity Lens Mission. https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.11871 https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.11871