CHEOPS - CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite logo.
February 7, 2020
The Universities of Bern and Geneva welcomed this Friday the quality of the sky pictures taken by the CHEOPS space telescope.
The CHEOPS space telescope took its first images of the sky. A first analysis has shown that the pictures exceed expectations, announced the Universities of Bern and Geneva on Friday.
The decisive moment was the opening of the telescope cover on January 29. With the taking of images, a new stage was crossed.
Image above: Following the successful telescope cover opening last week, Cheops acquired the first image of its initial target star as part of its in-orbit commissioning.
Gathered not far from Madrid in front of a large screen, scientists and engineers awaited the first images of the space telescope. "The first images that were to appear were essential for us to be able to assess whether the optical elements of the telescope had emerged unscathed from the launch of the rocket," explains Willy Benz, professor of astrophysics at the University of Bern and responsible for the CHEOPS mission. , in a press release.
"He works!"
"When the first images of a star field appeared on the screen, everyone immediately understood: the telescope is working," he rejoices. The question now is to what extent.
According to a first analysis, the images exceed expectations. This does not mean that they are perfectly sharp, as the telescope has been purposely defocused. Thus, the collected light is distributed over numerous pixels, in order to attenuate the effect of the movements of the satellite on the images and to increase the photometric precision.
CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite or CHEOPS
"The icing on the cake, the blurred images received are nevertheless even smoother and symmetrical than what we had imagined based on our measurements in the laboratory", continues Willy Benz.
High precision is necessary to allow CHEOPS to observe small changes in the intensity of light received from a star caused by the passage of an exoplanet in front of it. As the changes in brightness are proportional to the surface of the exoplanet, CHEOPS will be able to measure its size. "These initial analyzes are promising and encouraging for the weeks to come," continues the researcher.
100 billion planets
CHEOPS (abbreviation of CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite) is a project of the European Space Agency (ESA) and Switzerland, under the leadership of the University of Bern in collaboration with that of Geneva. CHEOPS will compose "a family photo of exoplanets" while observing about 500.
CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite or CHEOPS
Today, it is estimated that there are at least as many planets as stars in the galaxy, or about 100 billion. More than 4000 exoplanets - orbiting a star other than the Sun - had been detected since the discovery of the first, 51 Pegasi b, 24 years ago by the 2019 Nobel Prize winners Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz of the University of Geneva.
Related article:
CHEOPS telescope cover is open
http://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2020/01/cheops-telescope-cover-is-open.html
The opening of the CHEOPS lid postponed
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-opening-of-cheops-lid-postponed.html
Related links:
CHEOPS Mission Home Page: https://cheops.unibe.ch/
ESA CHEOPS: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Cheops
Images, Animation, Text, Credits: ATS/ESA/UNIBE/Twitter/Orbiter.ch Aerospace/Roland Berga.
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