Ecosyste.ms: Awesome
An open API service indexing awesome lists of open source software.
https://github.com/celestiary/mglt
Exploration of the idea of a Multiple Gravitational Lens Telescope
https://github.com/celestiary/mglt
astronomy
Last synced: 8 days ago
JSON representation
Exploration of the idea of a Multiple Gravitational Lens Telescope
- Host: GitHub
- URL: https://github.com/celestiary/mglt
- Owner: celestiary
- License: mit
- Created: 2022-07-31T11:22:01.000Z (over 2 years ago)
- Default Branch: main
- Last Pushed: 2022-09-21T08:06:05.000Z (about 2 years ago)
- Last Synced: 2023-03-09T16:25:47.736Z (over 1 year ago)
- Topics: astronomy
- Language: JavaScript
- Homepage: https://celestiary.github.io/mglt/
- Size: 318 KB
- Stars: 2
- Watchers: 0
- Forks: 0
- Open Issues: 0
-
Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
- License: LICENSE
Awesome Lists containing this project
README
# MGLT
Exploration of the idea of a Multiple Gravitational Lens Telescope.
## Background
This project was inspired by [discussions on Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32262545#32262889) about the proposal for a [Solar Gravitational Lens Telescope](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32262545).
## Goal
To determine whether there exists a configuration of stars (or other gravitational lenses) in the local galaxy that would enable a natural multiple gravitational lense telescope. The telescope would consist of a set of stars focusing distant light towards a collector based in our solar system. It is unknown whether there is such a configuration of stars that would allow observation of any interesting target. But it seems possible in principle to precompute the potential targeting field.
## Method
This project is hosted alongside Celestiary in order to use the local 100k star database, originally from [Celestia](https://celestia.space/), to run a search of stars and their lensing fields. The database contains star positions and types, which can be used to estimate mass. A star's mass determines its lensing field.
The Sun has a lens difraction of 1.73 arcseconds, which yields a focal length of 548-900 AU. This geometry determines the useful focal orbit for the SGLT. Similarly, some objects happen to have a [gravitational lense](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_lens) that is already useful from Earth.
A Multi-Gravitational Lense Telescope would combine the lensing from multiple objects to form a synthetic aperature. So the task is to search for combinations of lenses that focus at a point somewhere in our Solar System.
### Collimating Lens
The light arriving at the telescope would need to be filtered to remove the starlight from the lensing source, leaving only the objective's light for collection.
A related topic may be collimating lenses and their effectiveness. Some lasers achieve beams that diverge from parallel less in ~arcminute range, or better for larger lasers. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collimated_beam#Lasers
### Calculator
The code in this repo is currently used for a WIP calculator at https://celestiary.github.io/mglt/