Dr Cyril Bourgenot from our Centre for Advanced Instrumentation is part of a team developing cutting-edge technology to enable astronomers to look deeper into the Universe. He is presenting this work as part of the Royal Astronomical Society’s National Astronomy Meeting 2025, which is being hosted by Durham University this week. Here, Cyril tells us about his work and how it could help answer the ultimate astronomical question – is there life elsewhere.
Q. Cyril, tell us about your work to discover more about the diversity of planets in the Universe.
A. I am part of a team working on a new spectrograph which will enable astronomers to discover more about the diversity of planets beyond our solar system.
Spectrographs are a fundamental tool in astronomy. They allow scientists to probe the light from distant stars and learn more about what their composition and the elements the light has travelled through.
Existing spectrographs analyse visible/near infrared range. But, in the hunt for exoplanets (a planet outside our solar system), this only allows us to see larger or hotter ones.
The new spectrograph we are working on will operate in the longer infrared waves. This means it will be able to detect colder, fainter and smaller planets, that current instruments cannot.
This new technology will also be able to see forming planets that are still embedded in disks of gas and dust around young stars – so we can see how they are accreting.
We will also be able to carry out detailed studies of known exoplanets to reveal things like temperature, atmospheric composition, clouds and more.
The project is being led by the University of California Santa Cruz and Durham’s Centre for Advanced Instrumentation is leading on the design and manufacturing of some key parts of the equipment.
Q. What is Durham’s role in this search for exoplanets?
A. We're building the technology that will pick up light from the distant exoplanets and analyse it to understand the gases in an exoplanet’s atmosphere.
The new system is called SCALES , which stands for Slicer Combined with an Array of Lenslets for Exoplanet Spectroscopy.
Durham’s Centre for Advanced Instrumentation is a world-leader in the development of ‘slicer’ components for spectrographs. We have also designed, manufactured, tested and assembled ‘slicers’ for the James Webb Space Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope. Slicers are monolithic components made of tens of little mirrors which “slice” the image and reformat it into a 1-dimensional slit, which then fed a spectrograph.
However, with SCALES, we are combining this ‘slicer’ with the ‘Array of Lenslets’ for the first time. This combination will enable us to isolate exoplanet light in space, even that of colder exoplanets, and analyse this to understand its make up.
It is a new design concept that has never been done before, so it is truly at the forefront of astronomical technology.
SCALES will be installed in the Keck Observatory telescope in Hawaii later this year, meaning it will be online much earlier than other new astronomical instrument being built, such as the European Extremely Large Telescope.
Q. What makes this technology so exciting?
A. SCALES will allow for far more detailed mapping of the Universe – helping us to understand the diversity of exoplanets and how they differ from those in our own solar system.
It will also help us to understand how planetary systems are created at the birth of a star.
If offers the ability to identify the chemistry of exoplanets, and in doing so, to potentially identify those with a similar atmosphere to Earth.
It also opens up the possibility of mapping all the exoplanets, to create a database of them and their atmospheric chemistry, to understand whether they may have water or clouds for example.
For any scientist, contributing to work to understand more about space is an amazing thing to be part of. At is heart, technology like this feeds into one of the great questions in physics – are we alone in the Universe?
Q. What other projects has the Centre for Advanced Instrumentation been involved in?
A. Durham’s Centre for Advanced Instrumentation develops cutting-edge technology for space, astronomy, biophysics, remote sensing and more.
We have developed specialised processes and technology for the James Webb Space Telescope and the European Very and Extremely Large Telescopes. We have also recently completed work for the refurbishment of the GNIRS multifunction spectrograph within the Gemini observatory in Hawaii.
Our work also goes beyond astronomy. We have worked with the Space Research Centre on optical payloads and satellites to support the space industry.
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