Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Mar 1995
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1995a%26at....6..181m&link_type=abstract
Astronomical and Astrophysical Transactions (ISSN 1055-6796), vol. 6, no. 3, p. 181-185
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Angular Distribution, Earth Orbits, Photoelectric Emission, Solar Sails, Spaceborne Astronomy, Star Distribution, Stellar Occultation, Angular Velocity, Eclipses, Hubble Space Telescope, Light Curve, Spectral Signatures
Scientific paper
A big solar sail is now being planned for launch in Russia. It will consist of a flat disk with characteristic dimension of about 100 m. Such a sail being launched to the near-Earth orbit will occult the stars from time to time. This will enlarge the possibilities of the occultation observation method for obtaining information about angular sizes and other physical parameters of the star occulted. Possible applications are discussed. Star eclipses by the sail orbiting the Earth at the height of about 40,000 km being observed by a 1.5 m-telescope will take place once in about 1100 hours with the sensitivity of 7.3 m. This sensitivity is the limiting magnitude for recording diffraction light curves with an acceptable precision. The same observations made from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) when the solar sail is at the 100,00 km distance from Earth will achieve 8.1 m limit with an average time of about two months between successive occulations.
Moskalenko E.
Trunkovsky E.
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