Proposed 900-telescope array could detect an Earth-like exoplanet's atmosphere in a single transit
What do you do when the observation you need comes around once a year? Well, preparation is key, but this is the awkward truth about finding another Earth. When a planet crosses the face of its star, a sliver of starlight passes through its atmosphere on the way to us, and the gases there absorb their own particular colors. Read the spectrum carefully and you can list what the air is made of:…
Detecting the atmosphere of an Earth-like exoplanet during a single transit is a challenging task. The faint signal, about 1 part per million, is nestled within the bright starlight. Traditionally, astronomers would gather multiple transits to average out the noise, but for Earth-like planets orbiting at a year-long distance, this approach becomes impractical.
Instead, Jian Ge and colleagues at Shanghai Astronomical Observatory have proposed a novel solution: a distributed space telescope array called Life 2.0, consisting of 900 identical 1-meter telescopes. Each telescope would carry a miniature spectrograph and a low-noise detector, observing the transit independently and calibrating on its own.
The spectra from all telescopes would be combined afterward, effectively increasing the light-collecting power to match that of a 30-meter aperture. This approach eliminates the need for constructing a single giant mirror and leverages the mass production of identical units, which have already demonstrated promising performance in prototypes.
The Life 2.0 concept, detailed in a recent paper published on the arXiv preprint server, aims to provide the necessary sensitivity to detect atmospheric signatures, including oxygen, ozone, and water vapor, from an Earth-like planet orbiting a Sun-like star in a single annual transit.
Written by urgent.news from Phys.org's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — it may contain errors, so check the original before relying on it.
