2 ms·

This may be a silly question, but would you be able to create an interferometer style telescope array in space via a platform like starlink, ie small, inexpensi

• abbeyj 9mo ago
  That would probably be difficult at optical wavelengths. At radio wavelengths you might have a better shot, but we can build radio interferometric telescopes on Earth and since the atmosphere is relatively transparent at radio frequencies, you probably aren't going to get any advantage by trying to build one in Earth orbit. Though not the same thing, you may be interested in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Interferometer_Space_Antenna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Interferometer_Space_Ant...
  • privong 9mo ago
    There is a mission concept for a far-infrared interferometer: https://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/spice/ https://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/spice/ One would need to go to space for that of course.
  • floxy 9mo ago
    >you probably aren't going to get any advantage by trying to build one in Earth orbit. People want to put a radio telescope on the far side of the moon, so that it doesn't have interference from terrestrial RF sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Crater_Radio_Telescope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Crater_Radio_Telescope ...and your spatial resolution is proportional to the size of your telescope. So you could have really high resolution if you speckled your interferometric telescope array units around L1, L2, L4, and L5.