AUSTRALIA SPACE
Sydney University joins the hunt for habitable planets
By MySecurity Media
32 | Australia in Space Magazine
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ydney University’s Institute for Astronomy is partnering with California’s Breakthrough Initiatives, Saber Astronautics, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to search for habitable planets around Alpha Centauri, our nearest star system. The proposed telescope project, named TOLIMAN, will scour the so-called Goldilocks zone just over four lightyears away from Earth. Scientists believe temperatures on potential rocky planets there could allow for liquid surface water. “Getting to know our planetary neighbours is hugely important,” said Project leader Professor Peter Tuthill from the Sydney Institute for Astronomy at the University of Sydney. “These next-door planets are the ones where we have the best prospects for finding and analysing atmospheres, surface chemistry and possibly even the fingerprints of a biosphere – the tentative signals of life.”
Alpha Centauri is a triple star with two stars very like our Sun. The team believes either or both may host temperate planets. The third star, the red dwarf called Proxima Centauri, is already thought to have one planet in a Goldilocks orbit. The proposed TOLIMAN space telescope will use a new telescope mirror pattern known as a diffractive pupil. Rather than concentrating the starlight into a tight focused beam as is usually done for optical systems, TOLIMAN has a strongly featured pattern. This pattern will spread starlight into a complex flower pattern that makes it easier to register the fine measurement details required to detect the small wobbles a planet would make in the star’s motion.
Green blue planet The project has received seed funding from the
