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Today's Topics:
1. UCLA builds Photonic Lanterns: "A New Way to See the
Universe" (Stephen Loosley)
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Message: 1
Date: Sun, 26 Oct 2025 00:59:19 +1030
From: Stephen Loosley <[email protected]>
To: "link" <[email protected]>
Subject: [LINK] UCLA builds Photonic Lanterns: "A New Way to See the
Universe"
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Astronomers just captured the sharpest view of a distant star ever seen
A revolutionary photonic lantern has unveiled hidden structure around a distant
star, redefining how we see the universe.
Date: October 25, 2025 Source: University of California - Los Angeles
& https://sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/10/251025084540.htm
Summary:
A UCLA-led team has achieved the sharpest-ever view of a distant star?s disk
using a groundbreaking photonic lantern device on a single telescope?no
multi-telescope array required. This technology splits incoming starlight into
multiple channels, revealing previously hidden details of space objects.
FULL STORY
The Sharpest View of a Distant Star Ever Seen
Reconstructed image of the compact, fast-rotating asymmetric disc around ? CMi.
The white scale bar at the bottom right marks 1 milliarcsecond ? equivalent to
a 6 feet scale at the distance of the moon. Credit: Yoo Jung Kim/UCLA
Key Takeaways
Sharper views from a single telescope: Normally, astronomers link multiple
telescopes together to get the clearest images of distant stars and galaxies. A
UCLA-led team has now achieved record-breaking detail of the star beta Canis
Minoris using just one telescope equipped with a breakthrough device called a
photonic lantern.
How it works: The photonic lantern divides starlight into many fine channels
that capture subtle spatial patterns. Advanced computational techniques then
combine these channels to rebuild a high-resolution image filled with details
that would otherwise be lost.
A new frontier for astronomy: This innovative approach could let scientists
explore objects that are smaller, fainter, and farther away than ever before,
offering fresh insight into the hidden structure of the universe and sparking
new discoveries.
A Breakthrough View From a Single Telescope
For the first time, astronomers have used a new imaging method on a
ground-based telescope to capture the most detailed look ever at the disk
surrounding a distant star. Led by UCLA researchers, the achievement revealed
hidden structures that had never been seen before. This breakthrough paves the
way for scientists to study finer details of stars, planets, and other
celestial objects, potentially transforming how we explore the universe.
A telescope's ability to reveal faint or distant objects depends on its size.
Larger telescopes can collect more light, allowing them to see dimmer targets
and produce sharper images. The highest levels of detail are usually reached by
linking multiple telescopes together to form an array. Building these large
instruments, or connecting them, has long been the key to achieving the
precision needed for discovering new cosmic features.
Harnessing Light With a Photonic Lantern
Using a device called a photonic lantern, astronomers can now make better use
of the light gathered by a telescope to produce extremely high-resolution
images. The details of this breakthrough appear in Astrophysical Journal
Letters.
"In astronomy, the sharpest image details are usually obtained by linking
telescopes together. But we did it with a single telescope by feeding its light
into a specially designed optical fiber, called a photonic lantern. This device
splits the starlight according to its patterns of fluctuation, keeping subtle
details that are otherwise lost. By reassembling the measurements of the
outputs, we could reconstruct a very high-resolution image of a disk around a
nearby star," said first author and UCLA doctoral candidate Yoo Jung Kim.
The photonic lantern divides the incoming light into multiple channels based on
how the light wavefront is shaped, much like separating the notes of a musical
chord. It also divides light by color, creating a rainbow-like spectrum. The
device was designed and built by the University of Sydney and the University of
Central Florida, and it forms part of the instrument FIRST-PL, developed and
led by the Paris Observatory and the University of Hawai'i. This system is
installed on the Subaru Coronagraphic Extreme Adaptive Optics instrument at the
Subaru Telescope in Hawai'i, which is operated by the National Astronomical
Observatory of Japan.
"What excites me most is that this instrument blends cutting-edge photonics
with the precision engineering done here in Hawai'i," said Sebastien Vievard, a
faculty member in the Space Science and Engineering Initiative at the
University of Hawai'i who helped lead the build. "It shows how collaboration
across the world, and across disciplines, can literally change the way we see
the cosmos."
Pushing Beyond Traditional Imaging Limits
This method of separating and analyzing light enables a new way to see fine
detail, achieving sharper resolution than traditional telescope cameras.
"For any telescope of a given size, the wave nature of light limits the
fineness of the detail that you can observe with traditional imaging cameras.
This is called the diffraction limit, and our team has been working to use a
photonic lantern to advance what is achievable at this frontier," said UCLA
professor of physics and astronomy Michael Fitzgerald.
"This work demonstrates the potential of photonic technologies to enable new
kinds of measurement in astronomy," said Nemanja Jovanovic, a co-leader of the
study at the California Institute of Technology. "We are just getting started.
The possibilities are truly exciting."
At first, the researchers faced a major challenge: turbulence in Earth's
atmosphere. The same shimmering effect that makes distant horizons appear wavy
on a hot day causes starlight to flicker and distort as it travels through the
air. To correct for this, the Subaru Telescope team used adaptive optics, a
technology that continuously adjusts to cancel out these distortions and
stabilize the light waves in real time.
"We need a very stable environment to measure and recover spatial information
using this fiber," said Kim. "Even with adaptive optics, the photonic lantern
was so sensitive to the wavefront fluctuations that I had to develop a new data
processing technique to filter out the remaining atmospheric turbulence."
Exploring Beta Canis Minoris in Stunning Detail
The team put their technique to the test by observing the star beta Canis
Minoris (? CMi), located about 162 light-years away in the constellation Canis
Minor. This star is surrounded by a fast-spinning hydrogen disk. As the gas in
the disk moves, the side rotating toward Earth appears bluer, while the side
moving away looks redder, a result of the Doppler effect (the same phenomenon
that changes the pitch of a moving car's sound). These color shifts slightly
alter the apparent position of the starlight depending on its wavelength.
By applying new computational methods, the researchers measured these
color-based position shifts with about five times more precision than ever
before. In addition to confirming the rotation of the disk, they discovered
that it is lopsided.
"We were not expecting to detect an asymmetry like this, and it will be a task
for the astrophysicists modeling these systems to explain its presence," said
Kim.
A New Way to See the Universe
This innovative approach will allow astronomers to observe smaller and more
distant objects with unprecedented clarity. It may help solve long-standing
cosmic mysteries and, as in the case of the lopsided disk around ? CMi, uncover
entirely new ones.
The project involved an international collaboration that included scientists
from the Space Science and Engineering Initiative at the University of Hawai'i,
the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, the California Institute of
Technology, the University of Arizona, the Astrobiology Center in Japan, the
Paris Observatory, the University of Central Florida, the University of Sydney,
and the University of California Santa Cruz.
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