Re:Wolf 1069B: Earth-mass planet in the habitable zone of a ...
by floxy on Monday January 09, 2023 @05:49PM
(#34317596)
> multi pixel imaging of the planet would be required to claim direct observation.
Here is an interesting proposal for direct imaging of an exoplanet with 1 km resolution:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.08421
...and an interesting youtube video about it:
Re:Wolf 1069B: Earth-mass planet in the habitable zone of a ...
by adastra22 on Monday January 09, 2023 @11:53PM
(#34320676)
It's a cool idea. Unfortunately getting something out to 550 AU and stopping there would take the better part of a century even with advanced technology. And once you're there, you're really stuck in terms of what you can look at. You can only see what's on the other side of the sun, and with an orbital period of 12800 years, it's not like you're going to sweep out much of the sky in a reasonable timeframe.
Re:Wolf 1069B: Earth-mass planet in the habitable zone of a ...
by floxy on Tuesday January 10, 2023 @12:40PM
(#34328469)
If you skip to 14:38 in the video, they describe the solar sails that are supposed to be able to accelerate things to 22 AU/year, which get things to 550AU in 25 years. But yes, you are only going to be able to look at one thing once you get there.
Within our own solar system that generally means sample return, or sending people with a full biology lab. For an extrasolar planet? I don't think the astrobiology community is of a single mind regarding what should count as direct observation there. We're not sending people or doing sample return for thousands of years. One common opinion I've heard is that seeing an atmospheric spectrograph indicating the presence of biomarkers like oxygen and methane within the habitable zone would be a bio signature, but multi pixel imaging of the planet would be required to claim direct observation. I'm not sure this is a very strong scientific distinction, however.
I'm not an astrobiologist btw, but I used to work at astrobiology.nasa.gov. Small world!