A Nulling Wide Field Imager for Exoplanets Detection and General Astrophysics
Abstract
We present a solution to obtain a high-resolution image of a wide field with the central source removed by destructive interference. The wide-field image is created by aperture synthesis with a rotating sparse array of telescopes in space. Nulling of the central source is achieved using a phase-mask coronagraph. The full (u,v) plane coverage delivered by the 60m, six 3-meter telescope array is particularly well-suited for the detection and characterization of exoplanets in the infrared (DARWIN and Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) missions) as well as for other generic science observations. Detection (S/N=10) of an Earth-like planet is achieved in less than 10 hours with a 1 micron bandwidth at 10 micron.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0205523,
title = {A Nulling Wide Field Imager for Exoplanets Detection and General Astrophysics},
author = {Olivier Guyon and Francois Roddier},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0205523},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
18 pages, 16 figures. Accepted for publication in A&A