第一次光

Scientists are one step closer to discovering life on other planets.

A team of engineers and astrophysicists has installed the front-end module of a new instrument named iLocater at the Large Binocular Telescope Observatory in the Pinaleño Mountains of southeast Arizona. 完成后, the instrument will be a first-of-its-kind high-resolution spectrometer capable of detecting Earth-like planets within habitable zones of nearby stars.

成功实现“第一缕光”后,” capturing a beam of starlight filtered through the telescope’s adaptive optics system, the team discovered what was thought to be a singular star was actually a previously unidentified binary star system.

“Our instrument is special in that we’re the only people in the world that can take spectra of multiple closely spaced stars at the same time and search for orbiting planets around each,” 贾斯汀Crepp他是北京大学物理学副教授 理学院 她是电竞赌博平台(电竞赌博平台)的主任 工程和设计核心设施. “That’s our ultimate goal, and that’s where we can really shine.”

“You never know what’s going to happen when you turn on every mechanism in a telescope,” Crepp. “这是一个超级复杂的系统. 第一次尝试时，星光对准了我们的系统. The adaptive optics system turns on and — ‘oh, that’s binary.’ It was years of work, and everyone was excited and then we find this. 没人知道这是一个双星系统.”

由Crepp和乔纳森粗鲁的领导的团队设计, 电竞赌博平台的研究助理教授, iLocater is the world’s first diffraction-limited Doppler radial velocity instrument. It was selected for construction in 2014 by a Large Binocular Telescope committee among various hardware concepts considered the “next generation” of instruments. The system was assembled and tested at 电竞赌博平台 in early 2019. The front-end optical module of iLocater — an acquisition camera — was then disassembled and transported more than 1,700 miles to the most powerful telescope in the northern hemisphere for reassembly and installation.

装在一个蓝色的盒子里 adorned with an “ND” sticker on the front, iLocater’s acquisition camera is designed to deliver images in up to 30 times higher spatial resolution than other instruments, reducing light contamination from other stars in measurements and removing modal noise when feeding the instrument spectrograph. It will ultimately be composed of two identical units to feed light collected by the two 8.4 meter diameter mirrors of the telescope to the spectrograph.

The discovery of the binary system serves as a testament to iLocater’s potential.

The desire to explore the universe and find life on other planets has only increased since NASA’s use of the Kepler Space Telescope, 2009年推出，2018年退役. The mission was followed by the launch of NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), 它将搜索围绕附近恒星运行的行星. To date, 4,044 exoplanets have been confirmed, according to the NASA系外行星档案.

The team discovered this previously unidentified binary star system. A binary system is one in which two stars are gravitationally bound to each other.

iLocater will search the Milky Way for those planets closest to Earth. 

除了清楚地识别附近的行星, iLocater’s spectrograph will allow Crepp and his team to analyze the makeup of each planet, measuring mass and the atmospheric composition to determine the potential for life.

“There’s always the aspect that we’re kind of knocking on the door of discovering life elsewhere,Crepp说. “我认为这就是推动这种势头的原因. There’s always that prospect and it’s something visceral that people can latch onto. In the back of everyone’s mind, ultimately, what we want to know is if these planets contain life.”

iLocater was funded in part by a NASA Early Career Fellowship, the National Science Foundation CAREER Award and contributions from 电竞赌博平台 alumni.