A hypertelescope is an array of telescopes that work together to achieve higher angular resolution than a single telescope. It uses aperture synthesis and interferometric techniques. French pioneer Antoine Labeyrie proposed using it to detect surface features on exoplanets up to 10 light-years away.
A so-called hypertelescope is an interferometric optical array, or set of telescopes, arranged in a large lens form, that work together to resolve astronomical images at much higher angular resolutions than would be possible with any single telescope. Indeed, such a hypertelescope may allow for angular resolution approaching the resolution the telescope would have if the entire lens were as large as the distance across the array. For arrays with dimensions in kilometers or megameters, this can be very significant. However, angular resolution is not the only significant quality of telescopes, as most astronomers view the hyperscope as a specialized instrument.
The hypertelescope uses a technique called aperture synthesis to simulate a giant telescope with an array of smaller telescopes. The techniques used to implement the hypertelescope and make sense of its data are interferometric techniques, measurement techniques that combine two or more data points to create a clearer image. The whole field is called astronomical optical interferometry. Even kilometer-wide hyperscopes can get around many of the problems with single ground-based telescopes.
Hypertelescopes were first built in the mid-1970s, when they were used to accurately measure the precise positions and diameters of nearby stars. The distance between the two farthest constituent telescopes is called the baseline, which started at about a few meters or feet, and now varies up to about one kilometer (0.62 miles). Larger iterations of the hypertelescope are planned or in production now, including a space hyperscope with its parts held in place by solar sails.
French hypertelescope pioneer Antoine Labeyrie envisioned using hypertelescope arrays to image nearby exoplanets or planets in foreign solar systems. Labeyrie and colleagues have shown how a technologically feasible hypertelescope could be used to detect surface features such as continents, seasons and climates on worlds up to 10 light-years away. This could be very useful in determining the presence or absence of microbial life. In the future, even larger hyperscopes could be used to image extremely small or faint objects, such as neutron stars.
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