The low-order wavefront sensor for the PICTURE-C mission
Author(s)
Mendillo, Christopher B.
Brown, Joshua
Martel, Jason
Howe, Glenn A.
Hewawasam, Kuravi
Finn, Susanna C.
Cook, Timothy A.
Chakrabarti, Supriya
Douglas, Ewan S.
Mawet, Dimitri
Date Issued
August 2015
Journal
Proceedings Volume 9605, Techniques and Instrumentation for Detection of Exoplanets VII
Publisher
SPIE
Citation
Mendillo, Christopher B., et al. "The Low-Order Wavefront Sensor for the PICTURE-C Mission." Proceedings Volume 9605, Techniques and Instrumentation for Detection of Exoplanets VII, 9-13 August, 2015, San Diego, California, edited by Stuart Shaklan, 2015, p. 960519. © 2015 SPIE
Version
Final published version
Abstract
The PICTURE-C mission will fly a 60 cm off-axis unobscured telescope and two high-contrast coronagraphs in successive high-altitude balloon flights with the goal of directly imaging and spectrally characterizing visible scattered light from exozodiacal dust in the interior 1-10 AU of nearby exoplanetary systems. The first flight in 2017 will use a 10[superscript -4] visible nulling coronagraph (previously flown on the PICTURE sounding rocket) and the second flight in 2019 will use a 10[superscript -7] vector vortex coronagraph. A low-order wavefront corrector (LOWC) will be used in both flights to remove time-varying aberrations from the coronagraph wavefront. The LOWC actuator is a 76-channel high-stroke deformable mirror packaged on top of a tip-tilt stage. This paper will detail the selection of a complementary high-speed, low-order wavefront sensor (LOWFS) for the mission. The relative performance and feasibility of several LOWFS designs will be compared including the Shack-Hartmann, Lyot LOWFS, and the curvature sensor. To test the different sensors, a model of the time-varying wavefront is constructed using measured pointing data and inertial dynamics models to simulate optical alignment perturbations and surface deformation in the balloon environment.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2188238
