Tag Archives: near infrared

Hawaii clears land use for the Thirty Meter Telescope, construction to start in 2014

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Hawaii clears land use for the Thirty Meter Telescope

The Thirty Meter Telescope has been under development for more than a decade, but the sheer amount of land needed on Hawaii's Mauna Kea for its namesake main mirror has proved problematic: locals have formally challenged the multi-university effort over concerns that it might damage both the environment and natives' heritage. Regardless of which stance you take on the issue, the project is going forward now that the state's Board of Land and Natural Resources has granted an official land permit. The move clears an optical and near-infrared telescope with nine times the coverage area of its peers, and three times the sharpness. That's enough to observe light from 13 billion years ago as well as put a heavy focus on tracking extrasolar planets, including planets in the making. Any impact on science or Mauna Kea will have to wait when construction doesn't even start until April 2014, although we're hoping that environmental care requirements attached to the permit will let us appreciate both the early universe and modern-day Earth in equal measure.

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Via: Pacific Business News

Source: Thirty Meter Telescope

Visualized: Cassini probe gets a glimpse of Saturn’s shadow

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Visualized Cassini probe gets a glimpse of Saturn's shadow

The Cassini space probe has collected quite a few memories of Saturn in its eight years, swinging by the planet's moons and even listening to lighting storms. Even so, we're being treated to an uncommon sight today: the dark side of Saturn. A newly processed set of 60 images, originally taken in October, shows what the gas giant is like from near the center of its shadow. The slightly trippy color scheme stems from a mix of visible, near-infrared and violet light in the collage. Sitting in the darkness allows for more than just pretty pictures, as well -- it reveals details about Saturn's atmosphere and rings that would otherwise be obscured by sunlight. Just be sure to etch this mosaic in your memory. The last time Cassini had an opportunity for this kind of snapshot was in 2006, which rules out any quick retakes.

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Via: SlashGear

Source: NASA

Harvard makes distortion-free lens from gold and silicon, aims for the perfect image (or signal)

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Harvard makes distortionfree lenses from gold and silicon, aims for the perfect image or signal

Imaging has been defined by glass lenses for centuries, and even fiber optics haven't entirely escaped the material's clutch. Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences might have just found a way to buck those old (and not-so-old) traditions. A new 60-nanometer thick silicon lens, layered with legions of gold nanoantennas, can catch and refocus light without the distortion or other artifacts that come with having to use the thick, curved pieces of glass we're used to -- it's so accurate that it nearly challenges the laws of diffraction. The lens isn't trapped to bending one slice of the light spectrum, either. It can range from near-infrared to terahertz ranges, suiting it both to photography and to shuttling data. We don't know what obstacles might be in the way to production, which leads us to think that we won't be finding a gold-and-silicon lens attached to a camera or inside a network connection anytime soon. If the technology holds up under scrutiny, though, it could ultimtately spare us from the big, complicated optics we often need to get just the right shot.

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Harvard makes distortion-free lens from gold and silicon, aims for the perfect image (or signal) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 25 Aug 2012 00:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Phys.org  |  sourceHarvard University  | Email this | Comments

All-carbon solar cell draws power from near-infrared light, our energy future is literally that much brighter

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Fully carbon solar cell can power up from infrared light, our future is literally that much brighter

What's this orange-like patch, you ask? It's a layer of carbon nanotubes on silicon, and it might just be instrumental to getting a lot more power out of solar cells than we're used to. Current solar power largely ignores near-infrared light and wastes about 40 percent of the potential energy it could harness. A mix of carbon nanotubes and buckyballs developed by MIT, however, can catch that near-infrared light without degrading like earlier composites. The all-carbon formula doesn't need to be thickly spread to do its work, and it simply lets visible light through -- it could layer on top of a traditional solar cell to catch many more of the sun's rays. Most of the challenge, as we often see for solar cells, is just a matter of improving the energy conversion rate. Provided the researchers can keep refining the project, we could be looking at a big leap in solar power efficiency with very little extra footprint, something we'd very much like to see on the roof of a hybrid sedan.

All-carbon solar cell draws power from near-infrared light, our energy future is literally that much brighter originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 Jun 2012 05:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceMIT Technology Review  | Email this | Comments