Scientists measure brightness of the universe with NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft

Scientists struggled for decades to measure how much light produced by all of the galaxies in the universe. But NASA found something unexpected during its New Horizons mission. They discovered a tool for measuring the brightness of the all the galaxies.

Talking about the discovery, an assistant professor in RIT’s School of Physics and Astronomy and member of RIT’s Center for Detectors and Future Photon Initiative, said

“Determining how much light comes from all the galaxies beyond our own Milky Way galaxy has been a stubborn challenge in observational astrophysics,”

The finding is published in the Nature Communications this week. According to the study, the latest observation could be possible with the help of New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager, or LORRI instrument. The light shining beyond the Milky Way is known as the cosmic optical background. Zemcov’s findings give an upper limit to the amount of light in the cosmic optical background.

“The study is proof that this kind of measurement is possible from the outer solar system, and that LORRI is capable of doing it,” Zemcov said.

He futher added “This result shows some of the promise of doing astronomy from the outer solar system. What we’re seeing is that the optical background is completely consistent with the light from galaxies and we don’t see a need for a lot of extra brightness; whereas previous measurements from near the Earth need a lot of extra brightness. The study is proof that this kind of measurement is possible from the outer solar system, and that LORRI is capable of doing it.”