Seminar: Getting to know the neighbours: Earth analogues in Alpha Centauri with the TOLIMAN space telescope, 25th July, 1:00pm
When: Thursday 25th of July, 1:00pm AEST
Where: This seminar will be partially presented at the ACFR seminar area, J04 lvl 2 (Rose St Building) and partially online via Zoom. RSVP
Speaker: Prof Peter Tuthill
Title: Getting to know the neighbours: Earth analogues in Alpha Centauri with the TOLIMAN space telescope
Abstract:
The TOLIMAN mission will fly a low-cost space telescope designed and led from the University of Sydney. Its primary science targets an audacious outcome in planetary astrophysics: an exhaustive search for temperate-orbit rocky planets around either star in the Alpha Centauri AB binary, our nearest neighbour star system. By performing narrow-angle astrometric monitoring of the binary at extreme precision, any exoplanets betray their presence by gravitationally, engraving a tell-tale perturbation on the orbit. Recovery of this challenging signal, only of order micro-arcseconds of deflection, is normally thought to require a large (meter-class) instrument. By implementing significant innovations optical and signal encoding architecture, the TOLIMAN space telescope aims to recover such signals with a telescope aperture of only a 12.5cm. Here we describe the key features of the mission: its optics, signal encoding and the 16U CubeSat spacecraft bus in which the science payload is housed – all of which are now under construction. With science operations forecast on a timescale of a year, TOLIMAN aims to determine if the Sun’s nearest neighbour hosts a potential planetary stepping stone into the galaxy. Success would lay down a visionary challenge for futuristic high speed probe technologies capable of traversing the interstellar voids.
Bio:
Peter Tuthill is a professor of astrophysics at the University of Sydney with interests in stellar astrophysics, optics and advanced instrumentation. He holds a doctorate in astrophysics from Cambridge University with a research dissertation in astronomical imaging and stellar interferometry. After this he took up a research fellowship at the University of California at Berkeley, working in the group led by Prof Charles Townes (inventor of the Laser), where he helped develop the Berkeley ISI heterodyne interferometer. Building upon a series of self-directed research fellowships at Sydney, Peter joined the staff, serving as director of the Sydney Institute for Astronomy from 2010-15. He now leads a portfolio of large projects including beam combiners at CHARA and VLTI, astrophotonic and imaging instruments at Subaru, the AMI interferometer aboard James Webb Space Telescope and the novel diffractive-pupil TOLIMAN space telescope.