Cambridge Optical Aperture Synthesis Telescope
Have you ever tried to look at something really far away, like a star or a planet, but it's too small to see clearly? The Cambridge Optical Aperture Synthesis Telescope (COAST) helps scientists see these things in more detail by using a group of smaller telescopes instead of one big one.
Think of it like this: imagine you have a cake that is too big to fit in your mouth. You can cut it into smaller pieces and eat those pieces one at a time, right? COAST does something similar with the light from far away objects. Instead of using one big telescope to capture all the light, it uses several smaller telescopes to each capture a smaller piece of the light.
Then, special computers use all of the small pieces of light to create a bigger and clearer image. This is called "synthesizing" the aperture, or the opening through which light enters the telescope. It's like putting together a puzzle piece by piece to create a whole picture.
So, COAST helps scientists see things in space more clearly by using many smaller telescopes and synthesizing the aperture. This allows them to learn more about the object they're looking at and understand it better.
Think of it like this: imagine you have a cake that is too big to fit in your mouth. You can cut it into smaller pieces and eat those pieces one at a time, right? COAST does something similar with the light from far away objects. Instead of using one big telescope to capture all the light, it uses several smaller telescopes to each capture a smaller piece of the light.
Then, special computers use all of the small pieces of light to create a bigger and clearer image. This is called "synthesizing" the aperture, or the opening through which light enters the telescope. It's like putting together a puzzle piece by piece to create a whole picture.
So, COAST helps scientists see things in space more clearly by using many smaller telescopes and synthesizing the aperture. This allows them to learn more about the object they're looking at and understand it better.