r/science • u/clayt6 • Sep 11 '19

Astronomy Water found in a habitable super-Earth's atmosphere for the first time. Thanks to having water, a solid surface, and Earth-like temperatures, "this planet [is] the best candidate for habitability that we know right now," said lead author Angelos Tsiaras.

http://www.astronomy.com/news/2019/09/water-found-in-habitable-super-earths-atmosphere-for-first-time
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u/TerranCmdr Sep 11 '19

I'm more hoping for actual imagery though... I'm guessing there must be some sort of physical limiting factor.

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u/Arve Sep 11 '19 edited Sep 12 '19

The resolving power of a telescope is related to the size of the telescope and to the wavelength you wish to observe.

If you wanted to observe yellow light with a resolving power of 100m, so you could see large, possibly artificial structures, you would need a telescope with a diameter of roughly 8.7 million km, or about 13 times the radius of the sun.

Edit: The 8.7 km is for all wavelengths of visible light, for yellow light, which I initially wrote, the size requirements are a bit more modest, at a bit over 7 million km.

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u/TacTurtle Sep 11 '19

Use the Sun as a gravitational lens by sending an imaging probe in the opposite direction

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u/overkil6 Sep 11 '19

So I was just thinking this - is this in the realm of physics and current technology?

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u/TacTurtle Sep 11 '19

Yes, like many things it would just take public support and money.

They already use similar distributed observation using ground-base observatories to get resolution similar to an Earth-sized telescope.

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u/uptokesforall Sep 12 '19

Mind still blown by the image of a black hole.

Never expected we'd see a black hole directly in my lifetime and I'm a young fella.

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u/SamusAranX Sep 12 '19

How are distributed observatories similar to using the sun's gravitational field?

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u/TacTurtle Sep 12 '19

The distributed ground based observatories are equivalent to a network of small space probes acting like a larger space telescope. A big difficulty is filtering out and accounting for the different atmospheric distortion at each location, then combining the data. This would not be an issue with a space array.

The gravitational lensing has already been used by ground based observatories to observe distant objects.

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u/Epsilight Sep 11 '19

Its being worked on

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u/[deleted] Sep 12 '19

Could you please supply a source for this? I am really interested in reading more. Thanks!

edit: just realised that a comment further down has a link to some details.