Are we alone in the universe?
For scientists working on NASA 麻豆精品 S檚 proposed Habitable Worlds Observatory, that question is no longer purely philosophical. It is increasingly becoming an engineering problem.
Researchers at UCF 麻豆精品 S檚 are helping develop technology designed to help future space telescopes detect potentially habitable planets orbiting distant stars.
The NASA-funded project, known as PEEPSS (Photonics-Enabled Exoplanet Spectroscopic System), aims to help astronomers directly observe planets hidden within the overwhelming brightness of their parent stars.
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The work supports the long-term goals of NASA 麻豆精品 S檚 proposed Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), a future flagship space telescope intended to search for Earth-like planets beyond our solar system and analyze their atmospheres for signs of life.
Solving One of Astronomy 麻豆精品 S檚 Hardest Problems
Astronomers already know planets are common throughout the universe. The challenge now is identifying Earth-like planets that are extraordinarily faint compared to the stars they orbit.
Astronomers use instruments called coronagraphs to block a star 麻豆精品 S檚 glare while allowing faint planetary signals to reach a telescope 麻豆精品 S檚 detectors.
Even then, however, microscopic imperfections in a telescope 麻豆精品 S檚 optics can allow enormous amounts of starlight to leak through the system.
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The system performs an advanced form of wavefront sensing that detects and corrects tiny distortions in incoming light before they overwhelm planetary signals.
Unlike many existing systems that monitor light earlier in the optical process, PEEPSS performs wavefront sensing directly at the telescope 麻豆精品 S檚 focal plane, the same location where scientific imaging occurs.
That distinction is important because it allows researchers to detect and correct optical errors that emerge after light passes through a telescope 麻豆精品 S檚 coronagraph. Scientists refer to these distortions as 麻豆精品 S渘on-common-path aberrations. 麻豆精品 S�
To explain the concept, Eikenberry compares the system to trying to monitor a room you cannot fully see.
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By monitoring the complete optical pathway all the way through to the focal plane, researchers hope PEEPSS can help future observatories achieve the extraordinary precision necessary to detect habitable worlds.
A New Approach Using Photonic Lanterns
At the center of the project is an emerging technology known as a photonic lantern.
The device separates complex incoming light into individual optical channels, allowing researchers to recover not only brightness information, but also phase information carried by light waves, data that conventional imaging systems typically discard.
麻豆精品 S淭raditional detectors wipe that information out, 麻豆精品 S� Eikenberry says. 麻豆精品 S淧hotonic lanterns allow us to recover it. 麻豆精品 S�
That additional information enables what researchers describe as 麻豆精品 S渜uantum-inspired imaging, 麻豆精品 S� an emerging technique that uses light behavior to improve image resolution and filter out the remaining starlight.
Researchers at CREOL have become major contributors to the rapidly growing field of astrophotonics, which combines astronomy, fiber optics and advanced photonic technologies.
麻豆精品 S淭here are really only two major centers doing cutting-edge work on photonic lanterns, 麻豆精品 S� Eikenberry says. 麻豆精品 S淯s and the University of Sydney in Australia. 麻豆精品 S�
The project brings together collaborators from UCF, University of California, Santa Cruz, the University of Sydney, and the Space Telescope Science Institute. At UCF, Eikenberry works alongside graduate student Genevieve Markees and researchers including Rodrigo Amezcua Correa, Miguel Bandres and Jose-Enrique Antonio-Lopez, whose expertise in fiber optics and photonics helped establish the collaboration.
Looking Toward Habitable Worlds
The current PEEPSS project is structured as a three-year effort focused on building and testing prototype photonic lantern systems in laboratory and telescope environments.
Some versions of the technology have already undergone testing on telescopes in Hawaii through collaborations with the Air Force Research Laboratory and international research partners.
Ultimately, researchers hope the technology could become part of the future NASA missions searching for habitable planets around distant stars.
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For Eikenberry, humanity may now be approaching a historic turning point.
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And if future observations succeed, humanity may no longer simply wonder whether life exists elsewhere in the universe. For researchers involved in the project, that possibility is what makes the work so compelling.
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The PEEPSS project is supported by NASA through award No. 80NSSC26K0577 and brings together researchers from UCF, the University of Sydney and the University of California, Santa Cruz to develop advanced photonic technologies for future exoplanet imaging and spectroscopy missions, including NASA 麻豆精品 S檚 proposed Habitable Worlds Observatory. The initial PEEPSS concept development was supported by the University of Central Florida through its SPICE Academic Excellence Program.
