CHEOPS image of star HD 88111
Date: 16 April 2020
Satellite: CHEOPS
Copyright: ESA/Airbus/CHEOPS Mission Consortium
An image of the star known as HD 88111, taken by ESA's CHEOPS exoplanet watcher during its in-orbit commissioning in early 2020. The star is located in the Hydra constellation, some 175 light years away from Earth, and it is not known to host any orbiting planets.
To demonstrate the stability of the satellite and instrument, CHEOPS took an image of this star every 30 seconds for 47 consecutive hours.
The images taken by CHEOPS are intentionally blurred: this deliberate defocusing is at the core of the mission's observing strategy, which improves the measurement precision by spreading the light coming from distant stars over many pixels of its detector.
Last Update: 16 April 2020
