Welcome to the new version of CaltechAUTHORS. Login is currently restricted to library staff. If you notice any issues, please email coda@library.caltech.edu
Published September 16, 2015 | Published
Book Section - Chapter Open

End-to-end simulation of high-contrast imaging systems: methods and results for the PICTURE mission family

Abstract

We describe a set of numerical approaches to modeling the performance of space flight high-contrast imaging payloads. Mission design for high-contrast imaging requires numerical wavefront error propagation to ensure accurate component specifications. For constructed instruments, wavelength and angle-dependent throughput and contrast models allow detailed simulations of science observations, allowing mission planners to select the most productive science targets. The PICTURE family of missions seek to quantify the optical brightness of scattered light from extrasolar debris disks via several high-contrast imaging techniques: sounding rocket (the Planet Imaging Concept Testbed Using a Rocket Experiment) and balloon flights of a visible nulling coronagraph, as well as a balloon flight of a vector vortex coronagraph (the Planetary Imaging Concept Testbed Using a Recoverable Experiment - Coronagraph, PICTURE-C). The rocket mission employs an on-axis 0.5m Gregorian telescope, while the balloon flights will share an unobstructed off-axis 0.6m Gregorian. This work details the flexible approach to polychromatic, end-to-end physical optics simulations used for both the balloon vector vortex coronagraph and rocket visible nulling coronagraph missions. We show the preliminary PICTURE-C telescope and vector vortex coronagraph design will achieve 10^(-8) contrast without post-processing as limited by realistic optics, but not considering polarization or low-order errors. Simulated science observations of the predicted warm ring around Epsilon Eridani illustrate the performance of both missions.

Additional Information

© 2015 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). This work was funded by NASA grants NNG05WC17G, NNX11AD53G, and NNX15AG23G and through graduate fellowships awarded to E.S. Douglas by the Massachusetts Space Grant Consortium. Special thanks to Brian Hicks for many helpful conversations. Measurements of telescope mirror reflectivities provided by ISP Optics and typical reflectivities provided by Thorlabs. This research made use of Astropy, a community-developed core Python package for Astronomy; the IPython Interactive Computing architecture; IDL (Exelis Visual Information Solutions, Boulder, Colorado); and the SIMBAD database, operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France.

Attached Files

Published - 96051A.pdf

Files

96051A.pdf
Files (723.0 kB)
Name Size Download all
md5:91bfea2d51ba5b27cdfe952147bd91d7
723.0 kB Preview Download

Additional details

Created:
August 20, 2023
Modified:
January 14, 2024