Using the Moon as a mirror Hubble to watch transit of Venus in reflected light

Esahubble_potw1219a_1024

esahubble_potw1219a May 7th, 2012

Credit: NASA, ESA, D. Ehrenreich (Institut de Planétologie et d’Astrophysique de Grenoble (IPAG)/CNRS/Université Joseph Fourier)

This mottled landscape showing the impact crater Tycho is among the most violent-looking places on our Moon. But astronomers didnt aim the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in this direction to study Tycho itself. The image was taken in preparation for the transit of Venus across the Suns face on on 5-6 June 2012. Hubble cannot look at the Sun directly, so astronomers are planning to point the telescope at Earths Moon and use it as a mirror to capture reflected sunlight. During the transit a small fraction of that light will have passed through Venuss atmosphere and imprinted on that light astronomers expect to find the fingerprints of the planets atmospheric makeup. These observations will mimic a technique that is already being used to sample the atmospheres of giant planets outside our Solar System passing in front of their stars. In the case of the Venus transit observations, astronomers already know the chemical makeup of Venuss atmosphere, and that it shows no signs of life. But they can use the event to test whether their technique has a chance of detecting the very faint fingerprints of the atmosphere of an Earth-like planet around another star. This image shows an area approximately 700 kilometres across, and reveals lunar features as small as roughly 170 metres across. The large bullseye near the top of the picture is the impact crater itself, caused by an asteroid strike about 100 million years ago. The bright trail radiating from the crater were formed by material ejected from the impact area during the asteroid collision. Tycho is about 80 kilometers wide and is circled by a rim of material rising almost 5 kilometers above the crater floor. Because the astronomers only have one shot at observing the transit, they had to carefully plan how the study would be carried out. Part of their planning included these test observations of the Moon made on 11 January 2012. This is the last time this century sky watchers can view Venus passing in front of the Sun, as the next transit will not happen until 2117. The image was produced by Hubbles Advanced Camera for Surveys. A narrow strip along the centre, and small parts of the upper left part of the image were not imaged by Hubble during its observations, and show data from lower-resolution observations made by a ground-based telescope.

Provider: Hubble Space Telescope | ESA

Image Source: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1219a/

Curator: ESA/Hubble, Garching bei München, Germany

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

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Image Details

Image Type
Observation
Object Name
Moon
Subject - Solar System
Planet > Satellite
Planet > Satellite > Feature > Surface

Color Mapping

  Telescope Spectral Band Wavelength
Grayscale Hubble (ACS) Optical (OIII) 502.0 nm
Spectrum_base
Grayscale
Esahubble_potw1219a_1280
×
ID
potw1219a
Subject Category
A.1.4   A.1.4.1.1.4  
Subject Name
Moon
Credits
NASA, ESA, D. Ehrenreich (Institut de Planétologie et d’Astrophysique de Grenoble (IPAG)/CNRS/Université Joseph Fourier)
Release Date
2012-05-07T10:00:00
Lightyears
Redshift
Reference Url
https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1219a/
Type
Observation
Image Quality
Distance Notes
385000 km. Too small to add as ly
Facility
Hubble Space Telescope
Instrument
ACS
Color Assignment
Grayscale
Band
Optical
Bandpass
OIII
Central Wavelength
502
Start Time
Integration Time
Dataset ID
Notes
Coordinate Frame
Equinox
Reference Value
Reference Dimension
Reference Pixel
Scale
Rotation
Coordinate System Projection:
Quality
FITS Header
Notes
Creator (Curator)
ESA/Hubble
URL
http://www.spacetelescope.org/
Name
Email
Telephone
Address
Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2
City
Garching bei München
State/Province
Postal Code
D-85748
Country
Germany
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Publisher
ESA/Hubble
Publisher ID
esahubble
Resource ID
potw1219a
Metadata Date
2019-10-07T11:40:31.246159
Metadata Version
1.1
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