Colloquium by Keri Hoadley, University of Florida
Over the next few decades, NASA will take on its most ambitious project in astrophysics to date: to find signs of life on worlds orbiting other stars. The Astro2020 Decadal Survey recommended a large, 6-meter diameter infrared/optical/ultraviolet (IR/O/UV) space telescope to do just that. Alongside this revolutionary objective, this IR/O/UV space observatory, now known as the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HabWorlds), is set to make transformative, ground-breaking discoveries and answer questions we have yet to poise. A key part of this mission is its UV capabilities- yet, we are in danger of losing this necessary wavelength coverage on HabWorlds before we even enter significant design trades and considerations for the all-purpose Great Observatory.
In this talk, I will discuss ways we look to both accomplish key precursor science ahead of HabWorlds using UV light while rigorously developing and testing technical advances in UV optics and cameras for a variety of UV instrument architectures for HabWorlds itself. I will focus on two potential small UV missions that can accomplish these two objectives: SNOUT (the Small NASA Optical Ultraviolet Telescope) and UVIa (the Type Ia Supernova Ultraviolet CubeSat/SmallSat) and technology-driven programs that hope to drastically improve the performance of diffraction gratings for high-resolution UV spectroscopy.
Followed by wine and cheese.
Host: David Schiminovich