Diffraction adds concentric rings to the image we see.
sunlight is diffracted as it passes through and around the crystals uh it
You take a picture of the diffraction, and then you download that picture, and you can say, ah, these minerals are present.
The problem is that stars create this diffraction when they come into your telescope, and you saw that, right?
and just look at what the diffraction limited resolution is.
- Now, diffraction is inevitable.
This was then exposed to x-rays to get a diffraction pattern, and then scientists would work backwards to try to figure out what shape
theirs would move in a certain curve because of this diffraction as the water-- refraction because as the water, the light rays
And this results in what's called a diffraction pattern.
It crystallized this beautifully in the x-ray diffraction.
That's crazy. This is a diffraction grating. So it's kind of defracts the light into different modes. So again, you see the light enter the tank and it separates into these different modes.
- Right, and you get a diffraction pattern.
This finally gave Kendrew large enough crystals to create an x-ray diffraction image.
Curiosity has these two highly sophisticated laboratory instruments that are designed to ingest solid samples and perform x-ray diffraction and x-ray fluorescence.
And the crystals scatter the light, and you get a diffraction plot.
It has that special sunflower shape because of the way that we want it to control diffraction.
You can just do a basic optical calculation, which is look at diffraction limited resolution looking down, but turn the Hubble in the wrong direction, programming error.
And so normally when you have a piece of glass, that gives you the diffraction limit.
And if the wavelength of light is much bigger than the thing you're trying to see, the light will just diffract or bend around it so you won't be able to see it.
They kind of work backwards from the eventual pattern they want on the wafer, and they design the slits so that diffraction will occur
When I was talking about this with a friend, actually, he said, yeah, but you're using a diffraction grating.
Right? The problem is that when you do that, when you make a segmented mirror, all of that diffraction that you saw that makes the rings
But that's not the problem, because you have to use a bigger telescope to get the same diffraction limited resolution, and that's going to scale up like the distance.
But the other thing is it has to be kind of accurate, because this is light, and it has to be diffraction limited,
So here they are, and they shine it out with a Keck-type telescope, and they send this diffraction limited beam.