World News – African Union – Can a Giant Lunar Telescope Detect the First Stars?

A team of astronomers is reviving an idea that NASA scrapped a decade ago, where a huge observatory would be installed on the moon. The facility is called the « Ultimate Large Telescope », as the facility will easily outperform every other telescope in its class and pinpoint the things that theory predicted but never seen.

A large telescope with a liquid mirror installed on the surface of the moon could do a task that no other telescope can do: search for the first star signs in the universe. Even the very powerful James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to launch on October 31, 2021, will not be able to see older stars.. .

This is the disagreement between astronomers from the University of Texas at Austin, who explained their argument in detail in a paper that will be published in a future issue of The Astrophysical Journal (hard copy is currently available on arXiv).

The concept dates back to 2008, when a team of astronomers from the University of Arizona proposed the Lunar Liquid Mirror Telescope.. NASA flirts with the idea soon after but eventually abandoned the concept due to the dearth of related science related to Population Three Stars – the first stars to appear in the universe.. A telescope on the Moon will be able to gaze into space unimpeded by atmospheric influences and light pollution.

Volker Brum, co-author of the paper, said in a statement: « Throughout the history of astronomy, telescopes have become more powerful, allowing us to explore sources from earlier cosmic times in a row – closer to the Big Bang » of the University of Texas MacDonald Observatory. “The next James Webb Space Telescope will reach the time when galaxies first formed.

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The problem is that JWST – although powerful – will not be able to detect the smaller and less faint objects that existed prior to the formation of galaxies, specifically Pop III stars.. “The moment of ‘very first light’ goes beyond JWST’s powerful capabilities, and instead needs a ‘ultimate’ telescope,” said Brum.. .

Third pop stars came into existence a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, after being born from a mixture of hydrogen gas and helium.. The theory suggests that it was anywhere from tens to hundreds of times larger than our sun, but even then, this doesn’t match the size and brightness of an entire galaxy.. As such, the Pop III stars have eluded detection.

However, the authors of the new study, led by NASA colleague at Hubble, Anna Schauer, assert that Pop III stars should be discoverable.. We just have to define the spawning areas, which are expected to take the form of ‘minihalos. « The first stars were born inside small elementary galaxies, but the luminosity of these objects » is « too faint to be detected even during the longest exposure times, » the authors write in their paper.

“Our neighboring galaxy Andromeda contains nearly a trillion stars, and we can only see them with the naked eye in very dark places on Earth,” Shawer explained in an email.. “These first small galaxies contained 10 to 1,000 stars, and they are much farther away – it took more than 13 billion years for light to reach Earth. Both factors play together, and we’d expect the Minhalus to be about 100 trillion times lighter than Andromeda.

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By studying Pop III stars, we can study conditions in the early universe.

“In the early universe, before those first stars appeared, visible matter was only hydrogen and helium. Stars are necessary to « generate » higher elements, such as oxygen and carbon, which are essential for life, « said Schawer. “We are running computer simulations to better understand Pop III stars, but we are still not sure what size and size these first stars are and whether they formed in larger or smaller groups.. These questions can be answered with notes.

This is where the Lunar Observatory can help. Indeed, Shawer and her colleagues ran the numbers, and found that a large enough mirror telescope on the moon’s surface should do the job.. Nev Drury, co-author and prominent research scientist at the MacDonald Observatory, said the proposed Ultimate Large Telescope is « perfect » to meet the challenge.

The fixed mirror is located at the north or south pole of the moon and is 100 meters wide. The telescope will be autonomous and powered by a nearby solar power plant. The observatory sends the data to the satellite that is in orbit around the moon.

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The telescope mirror will be made of liquid rather than glass (this solution is lighter and more affordable in terms of transportation). The mirror must constantly rotate to keep the surface of the liquid parabolic. The metallic liquid comprises the top layer of the mirror to provide the desired reflection. To prevent excessive heat from ruining the display, the telescope will be built inside an impact crater and placed in permanent shade.

As the authors write, “It is unclear what effect lunar dust had on the apparatus and the observations.

When looking at the universe, the large telescope will eventually be stationed on one spot of the sky to absorb as much light as possible, looking for minihalos in near infrared and in intense redshifts (objects whose light is very red-shifted – Meaning that the wavelengths have been extended due to the expansion of space – they are farther away, and the farther away we look into space, the deeper we go in time). As the authors note in their paper, menialus must produce a distinct signature, so they must « be unambiguously identified. ».

Sure, we’re not going to look directly at Pop III stars, but we’ll be looking at their lineup locations – sort of firearms of their existence, and definitely the next best thing..

Looking to the future, Shawer is excited to launch JWST, which will allow scientists to study the early universe, including the first generation of stars that emerged after the formation of the Pop III star.. .

“For the future, I hope theorists and observers will work together to develop the technology for this lunar telescope further,” she said.. «  I also hope that humans return to the moon, for a possibility to create a site where ULT can be built.

This isn’t the only proposal to build a large telescope on the moon. NASA robotics scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Saptarchi Bandiupadhyay has outlined his vision for a lunar observatory, which will be built inside a large crater.. . Unlike the Ultimate Large Telescope (which will search for sources of infrared light), the Lunar Crater Radio Telescope will be an extremely long-wave radio telescope capable of detecting some of the weakest – and most distant – signals that travel through space. The Bandiupdiae project is currently in the first phase of NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program.

Maybe we’ll eventually see the first phase of NASA NIAC’s Large Telescope program one day. The first stars are running out of patience.

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Telescope, Moon, Liquid Mirror Telescope, Astronomy, Universe, James Webb Space Telescope, First Stars