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" Webster Cash created the Starshade project, a clever method to discover new worlds, because he was looking for a way to block out the light of a distant star, allowing a telescope to capture the light coming from its orbiting planets. But now the University of Colorado professor has reversed his own invention. Cash&amp;#039;s new creation is called the Aragoscope. It could become one of the first ways to take high-res pictures of stars and galactic nuclei, giving us unprecedented glimpses into objects too large for planet hunters to study but too small for Hubble and the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope. Aragoscopes could come in a variety of sizes, ranging from a diameter 32.8 feet to 3280 feet. The Aragoscope is circular in shape, designed as if to be a giant lens to a nearby telescope, but these humongous disks cost far less than building telescope mirrors of this size. The large opaque surface diffracts light to the center, where a pinhole camera aperture feeds the gathered light into a telescope, giving it high resolution views of distant, bright objects. &amp;quot;The purpose of the [Starshade] was to create super high contrast,&amp;quot; Cash says. &amp;quot;The purpose of this is to create super high resolution.&amp;quot; The project uses diffracted waves of light from the object it is viewing. All particles that move in waves diffract, or spread out, like a ripple in water. For example, a diffraction grating diffracts the light into the rainbow of colors we see in the visible spectrum. But current telescopes are &amp;quot;diffraction limited&amp;quot; in their ability to gather the light of the distant object through mirrors or aperture, and distant exoplanets can&amp;#039;t be resolved because of problems of diffracting the light The Aragoscope works as a series of mirrors to gather even more of the diffracted light and refocus it, boosting the overall optical power. Cash says the Aragoscope could see stars in unprecedented detail. This includes seeing sunspots and coronal activity. With a 100-meter (328 foot) disk, the device could make out the features of the stars in the Alpha Centauri system, and possibly see the ejections of plasma exchanged between the stars. These are the kinds of details that are too small for Hubble, whose cameras are more designed for macro objects like nebulae and galaxies. &amp;quot;What you&amp;#039;re going to be going after the bright, small objects that need higher resolution,&amp;quot; Cash said. &amp;quot;Start, for example, with stars.&amp;quot; An Aragoscope could also spot some of the most fascinating places in the universe by turning its cameras at galactic nuclei, and seeing the supermassive black holes at the center of nearby galaxies in action. A version of the Aragoscope with a 1000 km (32,800-foot) disk, the Aragoscope could use the X-Ray spectrum to resolve the event horizon of black holes. That&amp;#039;s the kind of observational power astronomers have only dreamed of. Cash&amp;#039;s creation recently won a Phase I award in the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program. Like many NIAC projects, it&amp;#039;s still early in the planning phases. Over the next few months, Cash and his team will start small, possibly with disks a few inches across, before going bigger to the span of a few feet. The initial tests would be bound by the limitations of the Earth&amp;#039;s atmosphere, which would obscure and distort the abilities of the Aragoscope. But if and when the larger Aragoscope is launched into, Cash has two places in mind he wants to aim it: Alpha Centauri, and the galactic nucleus of M87. From there, the heavens would open up. We would be able to view stellar weather and other objects we can&amp;#039;t currently resolve. And all of these possibilities have unfurled by thinking of the opposite of one of his own inventions. &amp;quot;I spent a lot of time understanding the physics of destroying diffractive waves very efficiently,&amp;quot; Cash says. &amp;quot;In the process, it&amp;#039;s not hard to see that you can use those detractive waves to create images.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/deep-space/a12980/cosmic-concept-seeing-stellar-weather-in-other-galaxies-16971989/>