Somewhere in the vastness of the universe another habitable planet likely exists. And it may not be that far -- astronomically speaking -- from our own solar system.
Distinguishing that planet's light from its star, however, can be problematic. But an international team led by UC Santa Barbara physicist Benjamin Mazin has developed a new instrument to detect planets around the nearest stars. It is the world's largest and most advanced superconducting camera. The team's work appears in the journal Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.
The group, which includes Dimitri Mawet of the California Institute of Technology and Eugene Serabyn of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, created a device named DARKNESS (the DARK-speckle Near-infrared Energy-resolved Superconducting Spectrophotometer), the first 10,000-pixel integral field spectrograph designed to overcome the limitations of traditional semiconductor detectors. It employs Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors that, in conjunction with a large telescope and an adaptive optics system, enable direct imaging of planets around nearby stars.
To read more, click here.