Sun tagged posts

The Metalens meets the Stars – Large, All-glass Metalens Images Sun, Moon and Nebulae

image of the metalens and camera
This 10-centimeter-diameter glass metalens can image the sun, the moon and distant nebulae with high resolution. (Credit: Capasso Lab/Harvard SEAS)
 

Metalenses have been used to image microscopic features of tissue and resolve details smaller than a wavelength of light. Now they are going bigger.

Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a 10-centimeter-diameter glass metalens that can image the sun, the moon and distant nebulae with high resolution.

It is the first all-glass, large-scale metalens in the visible wavelength that can be mass produced using conventional CMOS fabrication technology.

The research is published in ACS Nano.

“The ability to accurately control the size of tens of billions of nanopill...

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Will Earth still exist 5 Billion years from now?

This is a schematic view of the candidate planet's orbit in L2 Puppis disk. Credit: © P. Kervella (CNRS / U. de Chile / Observatoire de Paris / LESIA)

This is a schematic view of the candidate planet’s orbit in L2 Puppis disk. Credit: © P. Kervella (CNRS / U. de Chile / Observatoire de Paris / LESIA)

Old Star offers sneak preview of the future. What will happen to Earth when, in a few billion years’ time, the Sun is a hundred times bigger than it is today? Using the most powerful radio telescope in the world, an international team of astronomers has set out to look for answers in the star L2 Puppis. 5 billion years ago, this star was very similar to the Sun as it is today.

“Five billion years from now, the Sun will have grown into a red giant star, more than a hundred times larger than its current size,” says Professor Leen Decin from the KU Leuven Institute of Astronomy...

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