High contrast imaging with the JWST NIRCAM coronagraph
Abstract
Relative to ground-based telescopes, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will have a substantial sensitivity advantage in the 2.2-5μm wavelength range where brown dwarfs and hot Jupiters are thought to have significant brightness enhancements. To facilitate high contrast imaging within this band, the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCAM) will employ a Lyot coronagraph with an array of band-limited image-plane occulting spots. In this paper, we provide the science motivation for high contrast imaging with NIRCAM, comparing its expected performance to that of the Keck, Gemini and 30 m (TMT) telescopes equipped with Adaptive Optics systems of different capabilities. We then describe our design for the NIRCAM coronagraph that enables imaging over the entire sensitivity range of the instrument while providing significant operational flexibility. We describe the various design tradeoffs that were made in consideration of alignment and aberration sensitivities and present contrast performance in the presence of JWST's expected optical aberrations. Finally we show an example of a two-color image subtraction that can provide 10^(-5) companion sensitivity at sub-arcsecond separations.
Additional Information
© 2005 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). The research described in this paper was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It was supported by a contract from the NIRCAM instrument project at the University of Arizona.Attached Files
Published - 59050L.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 88408
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20180731-151510013
- NASA/JPL/Caltech
- Created
-
2018-07-31Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC)
- Series Name
- Proceedings of SPIE
- Series Volume or Issue Number
- 5905