Physics – Optics
Scientific paper
Jun 2007
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007lyot.confe..17k&link_type=abstract
Proceedings of the conference In the Spirit of Bernard Lyot: The Direct Detection of Planets and Circumstellar Disks in the 21s
Physics
Optics
Scientific paper
When Bernard Lyot presented the first movie of solar prominences to the IAU in 1938, the audience of astronomers must have appreciated the following: through a feasible technical innovation, scientists could routinely study a known phenomenon through direct imaging. Yet, beyond their imagination was the fact that a small modification to the Lyot coronagraph would reveal new faint moons and rings of the Jovian planets, and the debris disk of Beta Pic. During a 1994 conference in Paris, Brad Smith noted how he verified the disk-like nebulosity at the 2.5-m Las Campanas telescope without the help of a CCD: I decided to look for it [the Beta Pic disk] visually in the eyepiece using transfer optics and a hastily rigged coronagraphic mask. I could see it very clearly! The disk was certainly real. Why were these latter discoveries made in the 1980's instead of the 1930's? It seems that even though Lyot had made a breakthrough with respect to solar observations, the community did not make a sufficient connection with the great French astronomer to realize the full scientific potential of his coronagraph. So what are we missing today? By bringing together instrumentalists and research astronomers, the goal of the Spirit of Lyot Conference is to maximize the scientific gains that are possible with today's state-of-the-art technologies.
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