Our Mission
Our mission is to construct and operate a telescope array capable of revealing hidden reservoirs of gas from which galaxies form, testing core ideas for how structure emerges in the Universe, and probing dark matter. Our project is a new approach to building large telescopes at scale, with the potential to fundamentally change the way future large telescopes are built.
MOTHRA is a Convergent Research FRO funded and supported by Alex Gerko, CEO and Founder of XTX Markets.
MOTHRA
MOTHRA is a massive upgrade to the Dragonfly Telephoto Array
MOTHRA is being built by the same team that brought you the Dragonfly Telephoto Array, an innovative telescope built from networked telephoto lenses that achieved breakthroughs in astrophysics, revealing extremely faint, diffuse structures in the universe—including ultra-diffuse galaxies and vast stellar halos—previously invisible to conventional telescopes. MOTHRA is taking the Dragonfly concept to the next level.
MOTHRA has 1140 Telephoto Lenses with Ultra-Narrow Band Filters
MOTHRA is an array of 1140 high-end telephoto lenses equipped with tiltable ultra-narrow interference filters. When completed, the system will be optically-equivalent to a 4.8m f/0.08 refractor with a six+ square degree field of view, operating as an R=800 integral field spectrometer. Over wide areas of the sky, its line mapping sensitivity will be at least an order of magnitude deeper than any other facility on earth, or in space.
Mothra will reveal the hidden Universe
Our science goal is to map out the circumgalactic medium (the repository of most of the Universe’s baryons) in the nearby Universe. MOTHRA should also be capable of revealing the brighter pockets of the Cosmic Web, the largest collapsed structure in the Universe. We will probe galactic feedback, exploring how galaxies grow and evolve within their dark matter halos. Along the way, and almost by accident, we will make some mind-blowingly spectacular images of the cosmos.