Antoine Émile Henry Labeyrie (born 12 May 1943) is a French

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. Astronomers observe astronomical objects, such as stars, planets, natural satellite, moons, comets and galaxy, galax ...

, who held the Observational astrophysics chair at the

Collège de France The (), formerly known as the or as the ''Collège impérial'' founded in 1530 by François I, is a higher education and research establishment () in France. It is located in Paris near La Sorbonne. The has been considered to be France's most ...

between 1991 and 2014, where he is currently professor emeritus. He is working with the Hypertelescope Lise association, which aims to develop an extremely large

astronomical interferometer An astronomical interferometer or telescope array is a set of separate telescopes, mirror segments, or radio telescope antennas that work together as a single telescope to provide higher resolution images of astronomical objects such as stars, n ...

with spherical geometry that might theoretically show features on Earth-like worlds around other suns, as its president. He is a member of the

French Academy of Sciences The French Academy of Sciences (, ) is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French Scientific method, scientific research. It was at the forefron ...

in the Sciences of the Universe (''sciences de l'univers'') section. Between 1995 and 1999 he was director of the

Haute-Provence Observatory The Haute-Provence Observatory (OHP, ) is an astronomical observatory in the southeast of France, about 90 km east of Avignon and 100 km north of Marseille. It was established in 1937 as a national facility for French astronomers. Ast ...

. Labeyrie graduated from the "grande école" SupOptique (École supérieure d'optique). He invented

speckle interferometry Speckle imaging comprises a range of high-resolution Astrophotography, astronomical imaging techniques based on the analysis of large numbers of short Exposure (photography), exposures that freeze the variation of Astronomical seeing, atmospheri ...

, and works with

s. Labeyrie concentrated particularly on the use of "diluted optics" beam combination or "densified pupils" of a similar type but larger scale than those Michelson used for measuring the diameters of stars in the 1920s, in contrast to other

researchers who generally switched to pupil-plane beam combination in the 1980s and 1990s. The

main-belt The asteroid belt is a torus-shaped region in the Solar System, centered on the Sun and roughly spanning the space between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars. It contains a great many solid, irregularly shaped bodies called asteroids ...

asteroid An asteroid is a minor planet—an object larger than a meteoroid that is neither a planet nor an identified comet—that orbits within the Solar System#Inner Solar System, inner Solar System or is co-orbital with Jupiter (Trojan asteroids). As ...

8788 Labeyrie (1978 VP2) is named in honor of Antoine Émile Henry Labeyrie and Catherine Labeyrie. In 2000, he was awarded The Benjamin Franklin Medal.

Hypertelescope

Labeyrie has proposed the idea of an astronomical interferometer where the individual telescopes are positioned in a spherical arrangement (requiring them to be positioned to a fraction of a wavelength). This geometry reduces the amount of pathlength compensation required when re-pointing the interferometer array (in fact a Mertz corrector can be used rather than delay lines), but otherwise is little different from other existing instruments. He has suggested a space-based interferometer array much larger (and complex) than the Darwin and

Terrestrial Planet Finder The Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) was a proposed project by NASA to construct a system of space telescopes for detecting extrasolar terrestrial planets. TPF was postponed several times and finally cancelled in 2011. There were two telescope ...

projects using this spherical geometry of array elements along with a densified pupil beam combiner, calling the endeavor a "Hypertelescope"Laboratoire pour l’Interférométrie Stellaire et Exoplanétaire: Hypertelescope
project. It might theoretically show features on Earth-like worlds around other stars. According to ''New Scientist'':

References

*Antoine Labeyrie
Resolved imaging of extra-solar planets with future 10–100 km optical interferometric arrays
''Astronomy and Astrophysics Supplement Series'' 118 (1996), 517–24. *Antoine Labeyrie
Snapshots of Alien Worlds – The Future of Interferometry
''Science'' 285 (1999), 1864–65 (full text limited to subscribers). *Tony Reichhardt

''Space.com'', 16 September 1999. *Govert Schilling
The hypertelescope: a zoom with a view
''New Scientist'', n. 2540, 23 February 2006 (full text limited to subscribers, article contains some scientific misconceptions). *Bruce Dorminey
Astronomers build hypertelescope in southern French alps
''Forbes'', 26 March 2012 * *

External links

Lise (Laboratoire pour l’Interférométrie Stellaire et Exoplanétaire)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Labeyrie, Antoine Emile Henry 20th-century French astronomers 1943 births Living people Winners of the Beatrice M. Tinsley Prize Members of the French Academy of Sciences Benjamin Franklin Medal (Franklin Institute) laureates

Hypertelescope

See also

References

External links