New space telescope Aragoscope concept could image objects 1000 times sharper than Hubble

A new orbiting telescope concept developed at CU-Boulder could allow scientists to image objects in space

University of Colorado Boulder researchers will update NASA officials next week on a revolutionary space telescope concept selected by the agency for study last June that could provide images up to 1,000 times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope.

CU-Boulder Professor Webster Cash said the instrument package would consist of an orbiting space telescope and an opaque disk in front of it that could be up to a half mile across. According to Cash, diffracted light waves from a target star or other space object would bend around the edges of the disk and converge in a central point. That light would then be fed into the orbiting telescope to provide high-resolution images, he said.

The new telescope concept, named the Aragoscope after French scientist Francois Arago who first detected diffracted light waves around a disk, could allow scientists to image space objects like black hole “event horizons” and plasma swaps between stars, said Cash of CU-Boulder’s Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy. The novel telescope system also could point toward Earth and image objects as small as a rabbit, giving it the ability to hunt for lost campers in the mountains, he said.

The CU-Boulder Aragoscope was one of 12 proposals selected for Phase One funding in June 2014 by the NASA Innovative Advanced Concept (NIAC) program, designed to turn science fiction into reality through pioneering technology development. Other Phase One NIAC proposals funded — each for $100,000 over nine months — include an orbiting device to capture tumbling asteroids and a robotic submarine to explore methane lakes on Titan, the largest moon of Saturn.

Read more: New space telescope concept could image objects at far higher resolution than Hubble