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World's 'Most Advanced' Camera Will Hunt for Alien Worlds
By Tereza Pultarova, Space.com Contributor | May 17, 2018 07:36am ET
A new type of camera developed by U.S. researchers will allow astronomers to directly image planets around nearby stars in the search for another Earth.
The camera, called DARKNESS (the DARK-speckle Near-infrared Energy-resolved Superconducting Spectrophotometer), relies on extremely sensitive superconductor detectors to gather light from distant worlds.
According to physicist Ben Mazin, from the University of California, Santa Barbara, who led the team developing the camera, current optical and near-infrared telescopes use cameras with semi-conductor detectors — the same type that can be found in cellphones and digital cameras. [How Do You Spot an Alien Planet from Earth? (Infographic)]
But semiconductor sensors, Mazin said, have certain limitations that make it difficult for this technology to image faint objects — such as distant stars and planets in their vicinity — a problem that he hopes the novel technology in the DARKNESS camera, based on super-conducting detectors, will solve.
More:
https://www.space.com/40600-most-advanced-camera-for-alien-planets.html?utm_source=sdc-newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20180518-sdc