Overview of the SIM-Lite Astrometric Instrument

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics

Scientific paper

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Scientific paper

SIM-Lite is an updated design for a space borne astrometric mission. It will be located in a solar Earth-trailing orbit. SIM-Lite utilized technology developed for the Space Interferometry Mission. The instrument consists of two Michelson stellar interferometers and a telescope. The first interferometer chops between the target star and a set of reference and grid stars. The second interferometer monitors the attitude of the instrument in the direction of the target star. The telescope monitors the attitude of the instrument in the other two directions.
SIM-Lite will be capable of one micro-arc-second narrow angle single measurement astrometry, over a two-degree field of regard for magnitude 7 and brighter target stars. During the 5-year mission, SIM-Lite would search about 50 nearby stars for planets of masses down to one Earth mass, in the Habitable Zone, with orbit periods of less than 5 years. SIM-Lite will also perform global astrometry on a variety of astrophysics objects, reaching 4 micro-arc-second absolute position and parallax measurement accuracy on objects brighter than 15th visual magnitude. As a pointed instrument, SIM-Lite will be capable of achieving 8 micro-arc-second astrometric accuracy on 19th visual magnitude objects and 15 micro-arc-second astrometric accuracy on 20th visual magnitude objects.
We describe the instrument payload, how the instrument will do its astrometric measurements, and the expected performance based on the current technology.

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