Christina Moraitis (left), Doctoral candidate at UCF, and Nathaniel Harmon (right), a first-year graduate student, observe the mobility of the telescope on Sept. 15 in their project lab.
Hailey Reale, second year undergraduate aerospace major, snaps a picture of the moon out of one of the built array telescopes on Sept. 10, in a project meeting.
Christina Moraitis (left), Doctoral candidate at UCF, and Nathaniel Harmon (right), a first-year graduate student, observe the mobility of the telescope on Sept. 15 in their project lab.
A select group of UCF students work together to explore the world of dark energy – combining seven telescopes using new orbital techniques.
Doctoral candidate Christina Moraitis works with fellow UCF researchers on a fully university-funded project, which takes multiple small telescopes and combines them into one larger telescope using fiber optics. This allows for a more cost-efficient way to observe the night sky and study how the universe may be expanding, Moraitis said.
The project name sounds as complex as it is – Original Poly-Oculus Array. Fortunately, it has a nickname – OPA.
Moraitis broke down how she and her team explore the world of dark energy with just telescopes. She said once there are many telescopes built, they will be able to observe larger areas of the night sky. After the telescope captures in a photo what it sees, future researches will look at the same area in a few years and observe the changes or growth in the universe, also referred to as dark energy.
NASA defines dark energy as a property of space that affects the universe’s expansion. The agency said that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy.
“The idea behind this is, they all are looking at the same object in the night sky, and they’re taking all the light from that object," Moraitis said. "That light gets essentially squeezed down into an optical fiber. Each telescope would then have its own fiber, the light from each telescope will then all combine into what is called a photonic lantern."
Moraitis is working towards showing proof of this concept, which has never been done before. In the future, this will continue, with more and more UCF students working to add telescopes.
Nathaniel Harmon is a graduate aerospace engineering student who has worked alongside Moraitis for the past year. His main role in the project is to focus on mechanical aspects of the telescope.
“I enjoy it," Harmon said. "I have fun. It’s entirely, like, outside of my field; aerospace and astral astronomy are very different, but I’m having a lot of fun overcoming challenges.”
Hailey Reale, an undergraduate aerospace engineer student, is also assisting with the project. She works on the mechanical side alongside Harmon. Reale is currently focusing on the enclosure where the telescope array will sit.
“It’s really fun; she (Moraitis) usually gives us tasks to work on, or design," Reale said. "If we're stuck, she’s always there to help."
Although Moraitis will soon graduate, her work will continue. Not only through her research project, but also by the inspiration she has instilled in her aids.
“I’m planning on working on another project; I believe it’s working on gravitational waves and pulsars, and by starting, I mean helping with," Reale said. "Helping with Christina’s thesis is definitely giving me an idea of what it is like to be a grad student and what it is like to be working on something that has real life applications.”
Gravitational waves and pulsars are connected to dark energy. "Black hole mergers generate gravitational waves because, as they orbit each other, their gravity distorts the fabric of space-time, sending ripples outward in all directions at the speed of light. These distortions actually shift the position of Earth and the pulsars ever so slightly, resulting in a characteristic and detectable signal from the array of celestial lighthouses.” according to NASA. When listening for gravitational waves using pulsars, researchers can identify ripples in space time produced by these massive celestial bodies.
Hailey Reale, second year undergraduate aerospace major, snaps a picture of the moon out of one of the built array telescopes on Sept. 10, in a project meeting.
Once the project is complete, Moraitis said it will be the first to prove the theory of the possibility of combining telescopes using these optical techniques.
Moraitis said while the concept of this design has theoretically existed, it has not been done to this extent before. This would allow other universities to also create these telescopes for a lower cost.
As the project continues to be worked on, Moraitis said she gets closer to answering one question: Does dark energy really exist?
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