Publications (30)
Maximized ExoEarth Candidate Yields for Starshades
Christopher C. Stark, Stuart Shaklan, Doug Lisman +4
The design and scale of a future mission to directly image and characterize potentially Earth-like planets will be impacted, to some degree, by the expected yield of such planets.…
Starshade formation flying I: optical sensing
Michael Bottom, Stefan Martin, Eric Cady +6
A key challenge for starshades is formation flying. To successfully image exoplanets, the telescope boresight and starshade must be aligned to ~1 m at separations of tens of thousa…
High precision astrometry with a diffractive pupil telescope
Olivier Guyon, Eduardo A. Bendek, Thomas D. Milster +11
Astrometric detection and mass determination of Earth-mass exoplanets requires sub-microarcsec accuracy, which is theoretically possible with an imaging space telescope using field…
Optical Verification Experiments of Sub-scale Starshades
Anthony Harness, Stuart Shaklan, Phillip Willems +7
Starshades are a leading technology to enable the detection and spectroscopic characterization of Earth-like exoplanets. In this paper we report on optical experiments of sub-scale…
All Sky Doppler Extrasolar Planet Surveys with a Multi-object Dispersed Fixed-delay Interferometer
Jian Ge, Suvrath Mahadevan, Julian van Eyken +2
We propose to use a high throughput and high precision multi-object dispersed fixed-delay interferometer for all sky Doppler surveys for extrasolar planets. This instrument, a comb…
The Habitable Exoplanet Observatory (HabEx) Mission Concept Study Final Report
B. Scott Gaudi, Sara Seager, Bertrand Mennesson +183
The Habitable Exoplanet Observatory, or HabEx, has been designed to be the Great Observatory of the 2030s. For the first time in human history, technologies have matured sufficient…
Active correction of aperture discontinuities - optimized stroke minimization II: optimization for future missions
Johan Mazoyer, Laurent Pueyo, Mamadou N'Diaye +5
High-contrast imaging and spectroscopy provide unique constraints for exoplanet formation models as well as for planetary atmosphere models. Instrumentation techniques in this fiel…
Apodized vortex coronagraph designs for segmented aperture telescopes
Garreth Ruane, Jeffrey Jewell, Dimitri Mawet +2
Current state-of-the-art high contrast imaging instruments take advantage of a number of elegant coronagraph designs to suppress starlight and image nearby faint objects, such as e…
Microelectromechanical deformable mirror development for high-contrast imaging, part 2: the impact of quantization errors on coronagraph image contrast
Garreth Ruane, Daniel Echeverri, Eduardo Bendek +8
Stellar coronagraphs rely on deformable mirrors (DMs) to correct wavefront errors and create high contrast images. Imperfect control of the DM limits the achievable contrast and, t…
Vortex coronagraphs for the Habitable Exoplanet Imaging Mission (HabEx) concept: theoretical performance and telescope requirements
Garreth Ruane, Dimitri Mawet, Bertrand Mennesson +2
The Habitable Exoplanet Imaging Mission (HabEx) concept requires an optical coronagraph that provides deep starlight suppression over a broad spectral bandwidth, high throughput fo…
Apodized pupil Lyot coronagraphs designs for future segmented space telescopes
Kathryn St. Laurent, Kevin Fogarty, Neil T. Zimmerman +8
A coronagraphic starlight suppression system situated on a future flagship space observatory offers a promising avenue to image Earth-like exoplanets and search for biomarkers in t…
High-Contrast Testbeds for Future Space-Based Direct Imaging Exoplanet Missions
Johan Mazoyer, Pierre Baudoz, Ruslan Belikov +25
Instrumentation techniques in the field of direct imaging of exoplanets have greatly advanced over the last two decades. Two of the four NASA-commissioned large concept studies inv…
Current laboratory performance of starlight suppression systems, and potential pathways to desired Habitable Worlds Observatory exoplanet science capabilities
Bertrand Mennesson, Ruslan Belikov, Emiel Por +34
We summarize the current best polychromatic (10 to 20 % bandwidth) contrast performance demonstrated in the laboratory by different starlight suppression approaches and systems des…
Characterization of microdot apodizers for imaging exoplanets with next-generation space telescopes
Manxuan Zhang, Garreth Ruane, Jacques-Robert Delorme +5
A major science goal of future, large-aperture, optical space telescopes is to directly image and spectroscopically analyze reflected light from potentially habitable exoplanets. T…
Exploring the NRO Opportunity for a Hubble-sized Wide-field Near-IR Space Telescope -- NEW WFIRST
Alan Dressler, David Spergel, Matt Mountain +24
We discuss scientific, technical and programmatic issues related to the use of an NRO 2.4m telescope for the WFIRST initiative of the 2010 Decadal Survey. We show that this impleme…
High-contrast imager for Complex Aperture Telescopes (HiCAT): 1. Testbed design
Mamadou N'Diaye, Elodie Choquet, Laurent Pueyo +11
Searching for nearby habitable worlds with direct imaging and spectroscopy will require a telescope large enough to provide angular resolution and sensitivity to planets around a s…
Overview and Reassessment of Noise Budget of Starshade Exoplanet Imaging
Renyu Hu, Doug Lisman, Stuart Shaklan +3
High-contrast imaging enabled by a starshade in formation flight with a space telescope can provide a near-term pathway to search for and characterize temperate and small planets o…
Prospects for exoplanet imaging in multi-star systems with starshades
Dan Sirbu, Ruslan Belikov, Eduardo Bendek +3
We explore the capabilities of a starshade mission to directly image multi-star systems. In addition to the diffracted and scattered light for the on-axis star, a multi-star system…
Performance and sensitivity of vortex coronagraphs on segmented space telescopes
Garreth Ruane, Dimitri Mawet, Jeffrey Jewell +1
The detection of molecular species in the atmospheres of earth-like exoplanets orbiting nearby stars requires an optical system that suppresses starlight and maximizes the sensitiv…
The Habitable Exoplanet Observatory (HabEx) Mission Concept Study Interim Report
B. Scott Gaudi, Sara Seager, Bertrand Mennesson +79
For the first time in human history, technologies have matured sufficiently to enable a mission capable of discovering and characterizing habitable planets like Earth orbiting sunl…
Propagation of Aberrations through Phase Induced Amplitude Apodization coronagraph
Laurent Pueyo, N. Jeremy Kasdin, Stuart Shaklan
The specification of polishing requirements for the optics in coronagraphs dedicated to exo-planet detection requires careful and accurate optical modelling. Numerical representati…
Starshade Rendezvous: Exoplanet Sensitivity and Observing Strategy
Andrew Romero-Wolf, Geoffrey Bryden, Sara Seager +33
Launching a starshade to rendezvous with the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope would provide the first opportunity to directly image the habitable zones of nearby sunlike stars in…
Starshade Exoplanet Data Challenge
Renyu Hu, Sergi R. Hildebrandt, Mario Damiano +3
Starshade in formation flight with a space telescope is a rapidly maturing technology that would enable imaging and spectral characterization of small planets orbiting nearby stars…
The Star Formation Camera
Paul A. Scowen, Rolf Jansen, Matthew Beasley +21
The Star Formation Camera (SFC) is a wide-field (~15'x19, >280 arcmin^2), high-resolution (18x18 mas pixels) UV/optical dichroic camera designed for the Theia 4-m space-borne space…
Simultaneous Exoplanet Characterization and deep wide-field imaging with a diffractive pupil telescope
Olivier Guyon, Josh A. Eisner, Roger Angel +12
High-precision astrometry can identify exoplanets and measure their orbits and masses, while coronagraphic imaging enables detailed characterization of their physical properties an…
Key Technologies for the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope Coronagraph Instrument
Vanessa P. Bailey, Lee Armus, Bala Balasubramanian +84
The Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) Coronagraph Instrument (CGI) is a high-contrast imager and integral field spectrograph that will enable the study of exoplanets an…
Design of a telescope-occulter system for THEIA
Eric Cady, Ruslan Belikov, Philip Dumont +10
The Telescope for Habitable Exoplanets and Interstellar/Intergalactic Astronomy (THEIA) is a mission concept study for a flagship-class telescope-occulter system to search for terr…
Starshade Exoplanet Data Challenge: What We Learned
Mario Damiano, Stuart Shaklan, Renyu Hu +6
Starshade is one of the technologies that will enable the observation and characterization of small planets around nearby stars through direct imaging. The Starshade Exoplanetary D…
Astronomical Optical Interferometry from the Lunar Surface
Gerard van Belle, Tabetha Boyajian, Michelle Creech-Eakman +28
The lunar surface is a compelling location for large, distributed optical facilities, with significant advantages over orbital facilities for high spatial resolution astrophysics.…
Segmented coronagraph design and analysis (SCDA): an initial design study of apodized vortex coronagraphs
Garreth Ruane, Jeffrey Jewell, Dimitri Mawet +2
The segmented coronagraph design and analysis (SCDA) study is a coordinated effort, led by Stuart Shaklan (JPL) and supported by NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program (ExEP), to pro…