Related papers: Microelectromechanical deformable mirror developme…
Exoplanet imaging uses coronagraphs to block out the bright light from a star, allowing astronomers to observe the much fainter light from planets orbiting the star. However, these instruments are heavily impacted by small wavefront…
Astronomers working with faint targets will benefit greatly from improved image quality on current and planned ground-based telescopes. At present, most adaptive optic systems are targeted at the highest resolution with bright guide stars.…
Direct observation of extra-solar planets (exoplanets) is essential to understand how planetary systems were born, how they evolve, and ultimately, to identify biological signatures on these planets. However, the enormous contrast in flux…
Detection and characterization of exoplanets by direct imaging requires a coronagraph designed to deliver high contrast at small angular separation. To achieve this, an accurate control of low order aberrations, such as pointing and focus…
Modern observatories and instruments require optics fabricated at larger sizes with more stringent performance requirements. The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope will be the world's largest solar telescope at 4.0 m aperture delivering a 300…
Achieving high-precision light manipulation is crucial for delivering information through complex media with high fidelity. However, existing spatial light modulation devices face a fundamental tradeoff between speed and accuracy. Digital…
High-contrast imaging observations of large angular diameter stars enable complementary science questions to be addressed compared to the baseline goals of proposed missions like the Terrestrial Planet Finder-Coronagraph, New World's…
Future space telescopes with coronagraph instruments will use a wavefront sensor (WFS) to measure and correct for phase errors and stabilize the stellar intensity in high-contrast images. The HabEx and LUVOIR mission concepts baseline a…
More than half of the stars in the solar neighborhood reside in binary/multiple stellar systems, and recent studies suggest that gas giant planets may be more abundant around binaries than single stars. Yet, these multiple systems are…
The Roman coronagraph instrument will demonstrate high-contrast imaging technology, enabling the imaging of faint debris disks, the discovery of inner dust belts, and planets. Polarization studies of debris disks provide information on dust…
To detect Earth-like planets in the visible with a coronagraphic telescope, two major noise sources have to be overcome: the photon noise of the diffracted star light, and the speckle noise due to the star light scattered by instrumental…
Traditional optical imaging faces an unavoidable trade-off between resolution and depth of field (DOF). To increase resolution, high numerical apertures (NA) are needed, but the associated large angular uncertainty results in a limited…
In the field of planet and proto-planetary disk detection, achieving high angular resolution and high dynamic range is a necessity. Coronography coupled with adaptive optics on Hubble Space Telescope is a way to get both good spatial…
A Deformable Mirror (DM) is an important component of an Adaptive Optics system. It is known that an on-axis spherical/parabolic optical component, placed at an angle to the incident beam introduces defocus as well as astigmatism in the…
A vortex coronagraph is now available for high contrast observations with the Keck/NIRC2 instrument at L band. Reaching the optimal performance of the coronagraph requires fine control of the wavefront incident on the phase mask. In…
In this paper, we present the design and the expected performance of the classical Lyot coronagraph for the high contrast imaging modes of the wide-field imager MICADO. MICADO is a near-IR camera for the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT,…
The detection of molecular species in the atmospheres of earth-like exoplanets orbiting nearby stars requires an optical system that suppresses starlight and maximizes the sensitivity to the weak planet signals at small angular separations.…
The vector vortex coronagraph is an instrument designed for direct detection and spectroscopy of exoplanets over a broad spectral range. Our team is working towards demonstrating contrast performance commensurate with imaging temperate,…
Wavefront sensing and control (WFSC) will play a key role in improving the stability of future large segmented space telescopes while relaxing the thermo-mechanical constraints on the observatory structure. Coupled with a coronagraph to…
Direct exoplanet imaging via coronagraphy requires maintenance of high contrast in a dark hole for lengthy integration periods. Wavefront errors that change slowly over that time accumulate and cause systematic errors in the star's Point…