We know about thousands of exoplanets by now. But itโs still a mystery, whether there are planets in the Alpha Centauri binary system, which is just next door to us. My guest today, Professor Peter Tuthill, is the Mission Leader for the TOLIMAN Telescope mission, which is designed to find those answers.
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00:00 Intro
01:29 Are there planets at Alpha Centauri
08:22 How can we know they are there
11:20 TOLIMAN Telescope
30:04 JWST experiments
37:34 Next big telescopes for planet hunting
48:38 Discovering many more exoplanets
51:50 Next generation of instruments
59:05 Outro
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Thank you Fraser Cain & Professor Peter Tuthill
We need more of these highly focused missions
It's propellor head Christmas in propellor head Heaven! Thank You!
Thanks to those generous funders for their scientific interest
Babylon 5 ๐ Centauri Prime
An Ultraviolet Telescope might work better,
as it would have a higher resolution as the wave length is narrower and should allow You to see smaller object,
providing there is not to much dust or gas in the way.
Omg! This was my question from one of your Q&As!๐๐
Creating a lot of mini cube sat telescopes and put them in to orbit around the moon and earth,
then create a data link and photograph the target with all of them at the same time !
with an atomic clock in each ? the photos can be stacked on top of each other to get a better photo !
Kepler date could be used to look at stars that are in an eccentric orbit showing a planet, not circular ones .
I've been to Alpha Centauri using Gaia Sky ! ๐
If a larger version of Gaia was in a larger orbit say past Mars, then it should be able to resolve more accurate data !.
A DVD is use full try using a DVD burner on a mirror ! ๐
We need starship
There is a limit of what can be seen due to the wave length of light !
The Kev Telescope ๐
The Question is, is there Life There !
Very informative and interesting interview / conversation. Thanks for sharing this information. Intriguing.
Did I hear you say โItโs flying on the James Webb right nowโ ??๐ฎ๐ฎ๐ฎ๐ฎ
I really admire the laser-focused mission this represents.
Peter is so Eccentric ๐ฌ๐ค๐
Incredible news, and seems like they got the right man for the job. As a life-long sci-fi fan myself- i just wanted to recommend "Space Paw" by Gordon R. Dickson- if you can find it and have not read it yet. It's a really fun read with a very heart-warming conclusion. (I would say "happy ending"- but this is not a nail salon that specializes in "discounts for University Professors and US Air Force pilots…"- lol. Keep up the good work!
This is the type of science that I can get behind. It is very well explained. Taken with an open mind this may show more than hoped for. However it is my opinion all 3 stars should be looked at in this way, not just A&B. But, who am I. Thank you both. Be safe.
Do we have 3 planets in our habitable zone? Or 2?
Of course, there is life there, haven't you seen Avitar?
"Fascinating"!๐๐
Thank you Both!
Mike in San Diego.๐๐ธ๐๐
I positively love the thinking that made this mission possible. I have so many questions for Professor Tuthill.
You're looking for oscillations in the transversal plane — could you use a kind of time-based interferometry to single out modes that aren't shared in common between the A and B components of the system? If you're using a cubesat form factor, could you improve your resolution or data quality by fusing the signals from multiple instances of the telescope?
Also can I work for him? I am a computer scientist and systems engineer and I would love to work on a piece of software that could perform the signal analysis on that fascinating aperture masking interferometer. Satellite control systems for swarms of telescopes! Maybe I should go back to school for astronomy. I can't get enough of this news.
Back in college I interviewed Geoff Marcy (turned out to be a real piece of work) about his team's discovery of some of the first extrasolar planets in 1998-ish. They were using the "wobble" method back then to identify supermassive Jupiter-like planets. Pretty neat.
Did Professor Tuthill skirt the question of does his approach to tracking with binary's have to be done from space?
would something akin to a geostationary orbit about the sun be a viable orbit for such a thing, it'd give a more accurate reading as to the difference between our sun's pathing and another solar mass. as they all sort of jiggle about. wouldn't a photo negative type dealio be helpful for longevity of measurement as the star is quite bright so identifying the specific band width it kicks out perhaps the shadows the orbiting bodies in that system might be a viable option of viewing oblique angles of the planets and such. it'd take a bit of imagination to get a high degree of clarity. but by segments and monitoring orbitals some high res planets could be viable. a sun and it's orbitals is like a light bulb and a lamp fixture
Absolutely fascinating interview! I really loved his peek into the (Hopefully) near future potential of smaller. distributed, linked telescopes. Really exciting!
This was one of your best in terms of the structure and how you went about it. Asking the right questions and pushing back (gently) when needed. And for the record guys, FC was not interrupting, it was the poor connection, as stated near the beginning ๐๐
Ground base does allow for longterm upgrades, expansion and repairs as technology advances.
Hopefully, some day in the near future that will also be achievable in space. ;O)-
As usual, great interview! ;O)-
Very interesting interview
sorry, (ns) never trust a man in make-up.
We really need a lunar based interferometer. That would solve a lot of problems.
The podcast version of this cut off after 8ish minutes for me