Coin-sized camera spots distant planets ⚡ экспресс
Even with the smallest space camera, the size of a coin, we managed to 'catch' distant planets. It's like noticing the shadow of a fly against a streetlight several blocks away. Such observations help find worlds that big telescopes miss — what else might we glimpse through the eye of a needle?
The camera lens is no bigger than a quarter. You'd find it in a smartphone, but here it was mounted on the Hayabusa2 probe for asteroid landings. Yet scientists asked it to gaze afar—and the little thing pulled off the transit method (watching a planet cross its star's disk and slightly dim its light) for the first time, spotting exoplanets—worlds around other suns.
The camera caught the shadows of two scorching gas giants. Their passages caused brightness dips of mere fractions of a percent—like a chandelier's glow momentarily flickering as a mosquito flits by. By repeatedly capturing eclipses, astronomers stacked the signals and performed precise photometry (light measurement). One planet's orbital period had to be corrected—the discrepancy with earlier data was too large to ignore.
This success proves you don't need giants to hunt for worlds. Sometimes a baby camera is enough. The real twist? The instrument was built for navigation during landing on asteroid Ryugu, not astronomy. Now miniature tools can blaze a trail to finding long-period planets that big surveys miss.
🎯 The ONC-T camera was originally built for navigation during landing on asteroid Ryugu—now it's snagged an astronomical record.