ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Astron. Space Sci.
Sec. Astronomical Instrumentation
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fspas.2025.1441984
This article is part of the Research TopicNew Telescope Advances with Novel TechniquesView all 11 articles
The Case for a Rectangular Format Space Telescope for Finding Exoplanets
Provisionally accepted
- 1Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, United States
- 2Goddard Space Flight Center, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Greenbelt, Maryland, United States
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We suggest that rectangular primary-mirror telescopes provide a clearer path to discovering habitable worlds than other designs currently being pursued. We show that a simple infrared (λ ∼10 µm) telescope design with a rectangular mirror 20m in length and 1m in width, combined with technology already developed for JWST, can discover ∼11 habitable exoplanets and measure ozone in their atmospheres in a mission of ∼1 year. A mission of ∼3.5 years could plausibly discover ∼27 habitable exoplanets closer than 10 pc to the Earth, and determine whether there is ozone in their atmospheres. A square primary mirror with the same collecting area cannot resolve exoplanets that are within 0.23" of the host star, making it impossible to detect most of the nearby Earth-like exoplanets. The idea of collecting light with a high aspect ratio rectangular mirror could be used at any wavelength. It is particularly useful for measuring point sources with very small angular separations, as is required for exoplanet exploration.
Keywords: Exoplanet detection, habitable worlds, Space optics, Telescopes, Dittoscopes, Exoplanet atmospheres
Received: 31 May 2024; Accepted: 30 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Newberg, Swordy, Barry, Cousins, Nish and Rickborn. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Heidi Jo Newberg, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, United States
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