An optical vortex to see the cleanest exoplanets
2006/02/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria
It is not easy to see an exoplanet clean, as the orbiting star light covers it in some way, and with the best telescopes the resolution is also bad. Corographs are used to see the exoplanets as clean as possible, but another tool appears that can give better results: optical violence.
Optical violence is used for other tasks, and researchers at the University of Arizona found that the telescope could be used to observe exoplanets. In the optical vortex, the glass sheets are placed as a spiral staircase that diverts light, which allows differentiating the light from the star of the planet.
First, they have done the computer test and have seen that it is a hundred times more effective than an opaque disk. They have also tested it in the laboratory and have seen that it separates two laser beams. It has become clear that the optical vortex can be a good tool to see an exoplanet, now they have to do the tasks of combining it with a pointer telescope.
