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PIA20904: Half-Scale Starshade
A deployed half-scale starshade with four petals at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA., in 2014. The flower-like petals of the starshade are designed to diffract bright starlight away from telescopes seeking the dim light of exoplanets.
 Product Size:  4000 x 3000 pixels (w x h) 
 Produced By:  JPL 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA20904.tif (23.24 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA20904.jpg (861.4 kB)  

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

A deployed half-scale starshade with four petals at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, in 2014. The flower-like petals of the starshade are designed to diffract bright starlight away from telescopes seeking the dim light of exoplanets. The starshade was re-designed from earlier models to allow these petals to furl, or wrap around the spacecraft, for launch into space. Each petal is covered in a high-performance plastic film that resembles gold foil.

On a starshade ready for launch, the thermal gold foil will only cover the side of the petals facing away from the telescope, with black on the other, so as not to reflect other light sources such as the Earth into its camera.

Starlight-blocking technologies such as the starshade are being developed to help image exoplanets, with a focus on Earth-sized, habitable worlds. To learn more about these technologies, visit http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6454.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Princeton

Image Addition Date:
2016-08-09