Scientists collect high-resolution images of the surface of Polaris for the first time

In our solar system, scattered across one of Earth’s green mountains, six eggshell-white telescopes stare into the deep universe. As a cohesive basket, the dome-shaped structures collect cosmic light to guide modern astronomers as they explore space — and it’s thanks to this basket that we now have a brilliant new perspective on the light that guided astronomers of the past: the North Star.

Our visual knowledge of the current Pole Star (due to the axial wobble of the Earth, the title goes to different stars over the eons) runs deep. Artists old and new have depicted Polaris shining in their paintings, astrophotographers have captured it from their backyards, and scientists have trained their instruments on it for decades. But what’s special about these new Polaris images, courtesy of the CHARA Array on Mount Wilson in California, is resolution. The special thing about CHARA, as mentioned earlier, is that the telescopes work together, combining their light data at a central facility to produce a single, complete, clear image of a source. It’s as if the sextet of working telescopes forms a single, 330-meter (1,083-foot) diameter telescope. And because of this, the image resolution of the project—particularly its angular resolution—is excellent.