The telescope’s innovative design has proven itself for daytime sky observation and opens new doors for uninterrupted space observation.
Astronomers at Macquarie University in Australia have developed a new technique using light filters on the school’s multi-lens Huntsman Telescope. Originally designed for the ultra-sensitive night sky observation, telescope demonstrated the ability to accurately measure stars, satellites and other targets in broad daylight.
“People tried to observe the stars and satellites at optical wavelengths during the day for centuries, but it’s been very difficult,” said Sarah Caddy, who helped design and build Huntsman’s telescope. declaration from the university. “Our tests show that Huntsman can achieve remarkable results in daylight.
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The Huntsman Telescope, located at Siding Springs Observatory in Coonabarabran, New South Wales, combines astronomical camera and astro-mechanical focusing device with a unique set of 10 high-sensitivity 400mm Canon lenses. The lenses are oriented to work in parallel to monitor the same area of ​​the sky, capturing thousands of short-exposure images per second, which are then processed by an attached camera, the statement said.
Usually, sunlight drowns out the dim planets, stars and galaxies, so ground-based observatories are limited to nighttime observations. However, using special broadband filters with the Huntsman telescope, astronomers were able to block out most of the daylight while allowing specific wavelengths from celestial objects to pass through.
The researchers tested their filtering method on a mini-Huntsman single-lens pathfinder telescope for months to study optimal exposure times, timing of observations, and precise tracking of targets through atmospheric turbulence.
One of the researchers’ targets was the red giant Betelgeuse, which is located about 650 light years from Earth. The star has been in the limelight lately as she has been exhibiting a sudden change in brightness in 2019. This activity, believed to be the result of a mass ejection of material into space that created a dust cloud that temporarily obscured the star’s light, suggests that the star is preparing to explode in a supernova.
“This breakthrough paves the way for uninterrupted, long-term studies of stars like Betelgeuse, which undergo powerful eruptions at the end of their lives and eject huge amounts of stellar material in the final stages of the cosmic rebirth cycle,” Lee Spitler, co. – author of the recent study and associate professor at Macquarie University, said in a statement. “Astronomers love when stars disappear in the Milky Way supernova because it can tell us so much about how elements form in the universe.”
Daily observation they also enable continuous satellite tracking, space junk and other man-made objects orbiting the Earth and help prevent potentially damaging collisions.
“With approximately 10,000 active satellites already orbiting the planet and plans to launch another 50,000 low earth orbit satellites in the next decade, there is a clear need for dedicated networks of day and night telescopes to continuously detect and track satellites,” said Caddy, lead author of a recent study using Huntsman for daytime observations. “Daytime astronomy is an exciting field. thanks to advances in camera sensors, filters and other technologies, we’ve seen dramatic improvements in sensitivity and accuracy achievable under clear-sky conditions.”
Their findings were posted on May 20 in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia.