The Atmoscope: Using a Planet's Atmosphere as a Telescope

Abstract

The Atmoscope is the idea to use the atmosphere of a planet as a telescopic lens. It uses the refractive properties of an atmosphere to converge light rays to a focal line. It has been hypothesized that using Earth’s atmosphere could, under favorable circumstances, yield an amplification of 55; 000 for a detector that has a surface area of 1m2. However, the precise effects of the oblateness of Earth in combination with the effects of physical effects such as turbulence inside the atmosphere have not yet been researched. Here we show that incorporating the eccentricity of Earth diminishes the amplification greatly. We found using a ray tracing model for gradient-index media that the amplification for ellipsoidal planets has the following relation with the detector or pixel size: A / D􀀀0:66. For spherical planets this relation is A / D􀀀1. Furthermore, we implemented velocity diffusion to simulate physical effects inside the atmosphere, which surprisingly did not affect the amplification significantly. We anticipate this result to be a starting point for more sophisticated ray tracing models. For example, a full map for the refraction in the atmosphere could be used to test the effect of a non-homogeneous atmosphere. Much research still needs to be done, before it can be decided definitively whether the Atmoscope could be a useful telescope.