Studying Exoplanet Atmospheres With ARIEL
As we learn about more and more exoplanets we also want to learn more about them. One of the things we desperately want to know is the compositions of their atmospheres. ARIEL should help with that.
Image by Comfreak from Pixabay
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The new telescope that is being prepared by the European Space Agency (ESA) called the Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey (ARIEL) should be ready in 2029. It has been designed to be able to study the composition of the atmospheres of distant exoplanets in the visible and infrared parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.
The experts from ESA are now starting to build the telescope itself. During this phase, different parts that will test the design will be tested. The biggest challenge will be the construction of the primary mirror with a diameter of roughly one meter that is going to be built from aluminum and then coated with silver. This mirror will have to be capable of resisting temperatures lower than -230° Celsius (-382° Fahrenheit)
This is the first time someone is building such a large telescope from aluminum. The reason for choosing just one metal is that in such colds the material undergoes extreme shrinking but as it all shrinks at the same rate it still remains functional even if it is smaller.
Studying the atmospheres of distant exoplanets will provide us with valuable data about the planets outside our Solar system and will give us a better idea of whether our Solar system is average or abnormal. Based on that data we could improve our estimates for the numbers of potentially habitable planets out in the Universe.
We could also learn a lot about the creation and evolution of atmospheres of another roughly one-thousand exoplanets.
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