Supervisor: Frank Grundahl

Within the realm of fiction, the Death Star is perhaps one of the most iconic megastructures. A space station the size of a moon, equipped with a superlaser capable of blowing up planets. However, what if instead of destroying planets, the Death Star was turned to more peaceful purposes, such as discovering them?

In my student colloquium, I seek to answer this question. To do so, I will briefly discuss the history and theory of telescopes, the devices used to create digital images of what telescopes are pointed at, and modern telescopes, so that I am able to explain what a hypothetical Space Telescope-version of the Death Star would be capable of.

Finally, I will touch upon a suggested ESA mission that would be able to achieve the same results as our hypothetical Death Star Space Telescope, explain how it would be able to do so and why it never came to fruition.