Treffer: A laboratory demonstration of the capability to image an earth-like extrasolar planet

Title:
A laboratory demonstration of the capability to image an earth-like extrasolar planet
Source:
Nature (London). 446(7137):771-773
Publisher Information:
London: Nature Publishing, 2007.
Publication Year:
2007
Physical Description:
print, 23 ref
Original Material:
INIST-CNRS
Document Type:
Fachzeitschrift Article
File Description:
text
Language:
English
Author Affiliations:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, California 91109, United States
ISSN:
0028-0836
Rights:
Copyright 2007 INIST-CNRS
CC BY 4.0
Sauf mention contraire ci-dessus, le contenu de cette notice bibliographique peut être utilisé dans le cadre d’une licence CC BY 4.0 Inist-CNRS / Unless otherwise stated above, the content of this bibliographic record may be used under a CC BY 4.0 licence by Inist-CNRS / A menos que se haya señalado antes, el contenido de este registro bibliográfico puede ser utilizado al amparo de una licencia CC BY 4.0 Inist-CNRS
Notes:
Astronomy
Accession Number:
edscal.18646844
Database:
PASCAL Archive

Weitere Informationen

The detection and characterization of an Earth-like planet orbiting a nearby star requires a telescope with an extraordinarily large contrast at small angular separations. At visible wavelengths, an Earth-like planet would be 1 X 10-10 times fainter than the star at angular separations of typically 0.1 arcsecond or less1,2. There are several proposed space telescope systems that could, in principle, achieve this3-6. Here we report a laboratory experiment that reaches these limits. We have suppressed the diffracted and scattered light near a star-like source to a level of 6 X 10-10 times the peak intensity in individual coronagraph images. In a series of such images, together with simple image processing, we have effectively reduced this to a residual noise level of about 0.1 X 10-10. This demonstrates that a coronagraphic telescope in space could detect and spectroscopically characterize nearby exoplanetary systems, with the sensitivity to image an 'Earth-twin' orbiting a nearby star.