A team of astronomers from the University of Arizona has managed to capture an image of an exoplanet with a telescope that , instead of an infrared detector, uses essentially the same type of technology that typical CCD cameras are based on. digital.
Although the technique is still under development, experts believe that this opens the possibility of observing these objects in visible light from the earth’s surface . According to Jared Males, the scientist who coordinated the study, in The Astrophysical Journal , this advance will make it easier to locate extrasolar worlds capable of harboring life as we know it.
The photographed planet, called Beta Pictoris b, has about 12 times the mass of Jupiter, is 63.4 light years away and accompanies its star at a distance equivalent to nine times that which separates the Earth from the Sun, that is, its orbit would be smaller than Saturn’s.
In the images, the object is 100,000 times dimmer than the star. “It’s like looking at a small coin right next to the beam of a lighthouse from almost 7 kilometers,” says Males.
This same expert points out that, until now, to distinguish planets in other solar systems, terrestrial observatories looked for their heat footprint, that is, they used infrared. But in practice, this only makes it possible to find gas giants, bodies that are very massive and young enough to give off large amounts of heat.
On the contrary, other older and colder planets, whose conditions could be more conducive to the development of life, would go unnoticed.
In addition to the blinding brightness emitted by stars, which makes it very difficult to detect exoplanets, astronomers trying to locate them with non-space telescopes must deal with the turbulence that forms the Earth’s atmosphere itself, which makes the images taken of the stars , which appear to flicker, are blurred.
To solve this problem, these researchers have used the VisAO adaptive optics system, installed in one of the Magellan telescopes, in Chile. It uses a secondary mirror that can change its shape 1,000 times per second, providing a much clearer image of the sky.
