NASA’s Super Pressure Balloon Imaging Telescope Circles Southern Hemisphere in Search for Dark Matter

Jakarta –

Over the past few weeks, a large balloon has appeared to circle the Southern Hemisphere in the upper atmosphere. People who saw it worried that the strange balloon was a spy.

The big floating bubble is actually NASA’s newest telescope, the Super Pressure Balloon Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT). Instead of spying on people below, the telescope peered into the cosmos above for dark matter.

The giant balloon, which is wider than the average football field, was launched on April 16 from Wānaka, New Zealand, and has since completed more than two full revolutions around the Southern Hemisphere. This is the longest sustainable green and claimed flight for the telescope as it is carried by a balloon.

On May 6, photographer Erwin Enrique Sandoval captured a sharp SuperBIT image about 40km above Coyhaique in southern Chile. “We could see it high in the evening sky. The balloon was huge,” Sandoval was quoted as saying Spaceweather.

SuperBIT’s main goal is to search for evidence of dark matter by taking detailed pictures of galaxies to find signs of gravitational lensing, the phenomenon when light from distant galaxies is magnified as it travels through space, the gravitationally warped time around closer galaxies that could provide clues. about the true identity of invisible yet abundant matter.

A new study, released April 20 in the journal Nature Astronomy, reveals that light from strangely curved ‘Einstein rings’ could shed light on dark matter’s true identity.

At its high altitude, SuperBIT is above 99.2% of Earth’s atmosphere, which means there is little to no air to block its view of the stars. At this altitude, the telescope can also capture images during the day or night.

Astronomers believe that the data collected by SuperBIT is of comparable quality to the Hubble Space Telescope. Balloon-borne telescopes are known to have captured some stunning shots of distant galaxies.

But astronomy isn’t the only possible use for giant balloons like these. In June 2020, space tourism company Space Perspective released plans to bring civilians to the edge of space using a similar balloon. Sharp-eyed observers and astronomy enthusiasts may have more opportunities to catch a glimpse of the balloon.

“Hopefully, we’ll be completing many more hemisphere revolutions over the next few weeks,” said Debbie Fairbrother, head of NASA’s Scientific Balloon Program Office.

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(rns/afr)