ShareThisA University of Utah physics professor wants to use new technology to revive an old way of looking at and learning about stars.
Stephan LeBohec, an assistant professor in the university's Department of Physics and Astronomy, spends time studying ultra-high-energy gamma rays, but wants to use the telescopes that measure those rays to get better, high-definition images of stars up to 1,000 light-years away from the sun.
"This would give us a way to look at stars in a way we have not before," he said. "It would allow us to see the star, to find new hints about what's going on in the star that we haven't seen."
Currently, researchers mainly use indirect observations to determine the size and composition of a star. They chose to study stars that way because from the 1950s through the 1970s measuring stars directly was nearly impossible due to a lack of technology, LeBohec said. With recent advances, directly measuring the "twinkle" of a star could give more insight into how stars work.
LeBohec has set up two telescopes near Grantsville, Utah, that were originally used to measure gamma rays and now will measure the light emitted by a star. Over the next few years, he hopes to be able to measure the fluctuations in light from a star, or its "twinkle," to understand what the star is made of and better determine its features.
Two proposed gamma-ray telescope arrays may be built starting in 2013 in the United States and Europe, and LeBohec hopes to one day be able to align their dozens of telescopes to get images that are detailed enough to see dark spots on the surface of a star or see flares similar to those of our sun.
"These could give us images with much higher resolution than we have now," he said. "And maybe we can reach these kinds of details."
(Reach Sheena McFarland(at)sftrib.com. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)
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