End-to-end simulation of high-contrast imaging systems: methods and results for the PICTURE mission family
Name
end-to-endSimWriteup.pdf
Description
preprint
Size
702.71 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
cbf7b0c41f4f72b59e8a32b0f922bf16
Author(s)
Douglas, Ewan S.
Hewawasam, Kuravi
Mendillo, Christopher B.
Cahoy, Kerri L
Cook, Timothy A.
Finn, Susanna C. Finn
Howe, Glenn A.
Kuchner, Marc, J.
Lewis, Nikole K.
Marinan, Anne D.
Date Issued
September 2015
Publisher
SPIE
Citation
Douglas, Ewan S., Kuravi Hewasawam, Christopher B. Mendillo, Kerri L. Cahoy, Timothy A. Cook, Susanna C. Finn, Glenn A. Howe, et al. 2015. “End-to-End Simulation of High-Contrast Imaging Systems: Methods and Results for the PICTURE Mission Family.” In Proc. SPIE, 9605:96051A–96051A–13. doi:10.1117/12.2187262.
Abstract
We describe a set of numerical approaches to modeling the performance of spaceflight 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.
MIT Department
Space Telecommunications Astronomy and Radiation (STAR) Lab
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
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