New Cryogenic Camera To Capture Planets Outside the Solar System

NIX – a powerful new ‘luggage-sized’ cryogenic camera, will take the first pictures of young giant exoplanets.

This state-of-the-art, infra-red, cryogenic camera system has been developed with ground-breaking high-contrast imaging technology to allow astronomers to directly image or ‘take pictures’ of these young giants.

These exoplanets, which orbit stars beyond our own Sun, are even more massive than Jupiter, the biggest planet in our solar system.The NIX camera system is about the size of an average airline hold bag (about 0.8m x 0.4m x 0.6m).

In that small space it packs in the sophisticated capability to image exoplanets with its ground-breaking high-contrast imaging technology.NIX has been built at the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s (STFC) UK Astronomy Technology Centre (UK ATC) in Edinburgh.

It has been provisionally accepted by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial physics (MPE) in Germany, which leads the consortia of institutions and partners involved.