New Space Telescope Tech Could Be 1,000 Times Sharper Than Hubble

[rdunk]

As literally outstanding as Hubble was, can we even imagine how much 1000 times greater will the work of the "Aragoscope" space telescope be in bring us into the reality of the Universe?? WOW!!!

Well, that could happen, but as this article says, "The Aragoscope is still only a concept, but researchers hope to demonstrate a scaled-down version of the technology in the lab soon. They plan to use a 3.3-foot (1 meter) disc sitting several meters in front of a telescope".

Kasandra Brabaw, Space.com Contributor   |   February 26, 2015 02:25pm ET

A new type of orbiting telescope could take images more than 1,000 times sharper than those snapped by NASA's famous Hubble Space Telescope, the technology's developers say.

Researchers have dubbed their concept the "Aragoscope," after French scientist Francois Arago, who was the first to discover that light waves diffract around a disk. The Aragoscope would consist of an orbiting space telescope sitting tens or hundreds of miles behind an opaque disk up to 0.5 miles (0.8 kilometers) wide.

Light waves from stars and other objects in space would bend around the disk and come together at a single, central point behind it. That light would then be sent through the telescope, resulting in a high-resolution image.

The Aragoscope could take images of plasma swaps between stars and of black hole event horizons, the points beyond which nothing, not even light, can escape a black hole's gravitational pull, said project leader Webster Cash of the University of Colorado, Boulder. The instrument could also pinpoint an object on the Earth's surface as small as a rabbit, making the telescope useful for search and rescue efforts here on Earth.

The Aragoscope's disc would launch in a compressed form and unfurl in space. It would be made of a lightweight, plasticlike material similar to a garbage bag, saving money on launch costs.

More: http://www.space.com/28650-space-telescope-tech-aragoscope.html