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About BOSS

The Big Occulting Steerable Satellite (BOSS) mission is designed to provide improved resolution of closely spaced objects with comparable brightnesses (binary stars, microlensing events, ...) and to facilitate separation of dim objects from nearby bright objects (such as planets around stars). Historically, the Moon has been used to improve the resolution of ground-based observations whenever it happens to cross in front of an interesting target. Unfortunately the Moon is not ideal for this use. Its main problem is that we cannot put it where we want it when we want it to schedule an occultation.

The fix for this is simple: put up our own Moon! The idea is to put up a large satellite that can be used to occult objects on demand. We can perform multiple occultations to gain more information about the occulted source, and we will have control over the velocity of the satellite to prolong integration times.

From the simple idea we have been studying the feasibility of putting up such a satellite. Some of the results of this on-going study can be found on this web site.

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