Demonstration Of Ohe PIAA Coronagraph For Exoplanet Imaging At NASA Ames.

Details Demonstration Of Ohe PIAA Coronagraph For Exoplanet Imaging At NASA Ames. Demonstration Of Ohe PIAA Coronagraph For Exoplanet Imaging At NASA Ames.

Jan 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009aas...21345107b&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #213, #451.07; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.345

Computer Science

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Scientific paper

Direct imaging of extrasolar planets, and Earth-like planets in particular, is an exciting but difficult problem requiring a telescope imaging system with 1010 contrast at separations of 100mas and less. Furthermore, the current NASA science budget may only allow for a small 1-2m space telescope for this task, which puts strong demands on the performance of the imaging instrument. Fortunately, an efficient coronagraph called the Phase Induced Amplitude Apodization (PIAA) has been maturing and may enable Earth-like planet imaging for such small telescopes. NASA Ames is embarking on a laboratory effort to develop a flexible laboratory facility to be operated in air, to demonstrate the PIAA coronagraph as well as the necessary wavefront control and other related technologies. For our wavefront control we are focusing on using small Micro-Electro-Mechanical-System deformable mirrors (MEMS DMs), which promises to reduce the size of the beam and overall instrument, a consideration that becomes very important for small telescopes. In this poster, we describe our lab status and the results to date, as well as plans and expectations for the future. In particular, we have been operating a lens-based PIAA system with a MEMS DM in a passive thermal enclosure, and will describe our latest contrast achieved, wavefront control methods, limiting factors, and methods to overcome those limiting factors. The main limiting factor is expected to be thermal instabilities, which cause mechanical flexures and air currents. For a passive enclosure these are expected to limit contrast to about 107, and to combat this, we are upgrading our enclosure to include active temperature control, which is estimated to provide stability down to the level of 109 contrast.

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