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

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

, who held the Observational astrophysics chair at the

Collège de France The Collège de France (), formerly known as the ''Collège Royal'' or as the ''Collège impérial'' founded in 1530 by François I, is a higher education and research establishment ('' grand établissement'') in France. It is located in Paris n ...

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 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 (French: ''Académie des sciences'') is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV of France, Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French Scientific me ...

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, french: Observatoire de Haute-Provence) 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 ...

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

speckle interferometry Speckle imaging describes a range of high-resolution astronomical imaging techniques based on the analysis of large numbers of short exposures that freeze the variation of atmospheric turbulence. They can be divided into the shift-and-add ("'' ...

, and works with astronomical interferometers. 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 astronomical interferometer 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, located roughly between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars. It contains a great many solid, irregularly shaped bodies, of many sizes, but much smaller than planets, called ...

asteroid An asteroid is a minor planet of the inner Solar System. Sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1-meter rocks to a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter; they are rocky, metallic or icy bodies with no atmosphere. ...

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 Mertz is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Albert Mertz (1920–1990), Danish painter * Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim, (1905–1944), German officer and resistance fighter involved in the 20 July Plot against Adolf Hitler * Ba ...

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

Hypertelescope

See also

References

External links