Excellent Jodrell Bank Event and Question

[JamesK]

As it is half-term (lucky me ) I went a visited Jodrell Bank, the big radio telescope site in Cheshire. It was a good visit but the best part was the "Ask an Astronomer" event running all this week (I think it's "Ask an Engineer" some days). The Astronomer (who's name I can't remember right now ) gave a good talk and answered a range of questions really well ranging from questions from 5/6 year olds about how the Moon was formed and how far the telescope could see to questions about the shape of the universe, if light had mass, and other far out things.

Anyway, I asked if we could ever get enough oprical telescopes in an array in orbit to create a resolution so that we could actully image an exoplanet in some detail.

He said it would not be possible, because the planets are so tiny compared to the massive distances between the stars, but it would be good we could.

He said that there is only actually one star we can image. (I took this to mean resolve as a disk). Does anyone know which star this is?

[tinvek]

was he being clever and meant the sun?

[JamesK]

Ha, I didn't think of that - but I'm not sure he seemed the type of guy who would say that without explaining it afterwards. Could be though.

[narrowbandpaul]

betelgeuse can be resolved using speckle interferometry

Speckle imaging - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

but this applies in optical light?

radio telescopes dont have great angular resolution due to the long wavelengths ~0.1m or longer

[JamesK]

Thanks Paul. No, he didn't specify, but I reckon thats what he meant. In fact, when I thought about it later my first thought was of Betelgeuse. In fact this page pretty much confirms it.

ESO - ESO 27/09 - Sharpest views of Betelgeuse reveal how supergiant stars lose mass

Anyway, I would reccommend anyone visting the centre this week go along to the event, especially considering its no extra charge on the already cheap entrance to the visitor centre. When I saw the Gemini Meteor Shower night later this year, I was gutted to find it was aready sold out!

[albedo0.39]

Interesting thread - BTW, did you know that the shape of the Jodrell bank that we see now is not the original ? The current dish is overlayed upon an older shape that didn't quite work so they built a new one right over the top. How do I know this ? Well, it's because I've walked between the 2 dishes ! I used to work for a company where we upgraded the main tracking system and so was "forced" to make a few site visits to check in with the engineers

It's very very impressive up close and personal I can tell you !