Astronomers from the University of Colorado Boulder have proposed a new space observatory that will take high resolution photos 1,000 times better than the Hubble Space Telescope.
This new orbiting observatory will capture images of space and beyond that are sharper and clearer as opposed to those taken by the Hubble since 1990.
Called the Aragoscope, the space telescope will consist of a telescope placed behind an opaque disk measuing half a mile in diameter. This special disk will be built from a material similar to plastic and will be unfolded in space.
Light from a distant target will be filtered around the disk which will form a diffracted image focusing on a central point. The result is a high resolution image.
Aragoscope, which will be quite light in weight, also presents opportunities to launch observatories into space at a much lower cost. The planned James Webb Telescope is poised to be the successor to the Hubble space observatory and will be launched in October 2018. This system, however, is considerably heavier than the Aragoscope.
According to Anthony Harness from the University of Colorado, a lighter telescope and a bigger structure can produce higher resolutions. The Aragoscope is the revolutionary step towards bigger space telescopes.
The project to build Aragoscope has been granted US$100,000 funding by NASA. The Aragoscope team, however, is now seeking an additional US$500,000 from NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts program.
The Aragoscope was named after French physicist Dominique François Jean Arago who first identified the process of diffracted light waves bending around a disk.
If the proposed project gets its funding, the Aragoscope will be able to capture images of the event horizon, which is a point in black holes where nothing, not even light, can return.
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