相关论文: Shedding Light on Large Space-Based Telescopes: Mo…
The expected yield of potentially Earth-like planets is a useful metric for designing future exoplanet-imaging missions. Recent yield studies of direct-imaging missions have focused primarily on yield methods and trade studies using "toy"…
Micrometeoroid or space debris impacts have been observed in the focal planes of the XMM-Newton and Swift-XRT X-ray observatories. These impacts have resulted in damage to, and in one case the failure of, focal-plane Charge-Coupled Device…
Stray light significantly influences the detection capabilities of astronomical telescopes. The actual stray-light level during observations depends not only on the telescope's inherent stray-light suppression capability but also on its…
Next-generation large segmented mirror telescopes are expected to perform direct imaging and characterization of Earth-like rocky planets, which requires contrast limits of $10^{-7}$ to $10^{-8}$ at wavelengths from I to J band. One…
The sky observed by space telescopes in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) can be dominated by stray light from multiple sources including the Earth, Sun and Moon. This stray light presents a significant challenge to missions that aim to make a secure…
Observing Earth-like exoplanets orbiting within the habitable zone of Sun-like stars and studying their atmospheres in reflected starlight requires contrasts of $\sim1\mathrm{e}{-10}$ in the visible. At such high contrast, starlight…
Mirrors are a subset of optical components essential for the success of current and future space missions. Most of the telescopes for space programs ranging from Earth Observation to Astrophysics and covering all the electromagnetic…
We investigate lens orbital motion in astrometric microlensing and its detectability. In microlensing events, the light centroid shift in the source trajectory (the astrometric trajectory) falls off much more slowly than the light…
Weak lensing observations have the potential to be even more powerful than cosmic microwave background (CMB) observations in constraining cosmological parameters. However, the practical limits to weak lensing observations are not known.…
Astrometric microlensing will offer in the next future a new channel for investigating the nature of both lenses and sources involved in a gravitational microlensing event. The effect, corresponding to the shift of the position of the…
The yield of Earth-like planets will likely be a primary science metric for future space-based missions that will drive telescope aperture size. Maximizing the exoEarth candidate yield is therefore critical to minimizing the required…
Future large space- or ground-based telescopes will offer the resolution and sensitivity to probe the habitable zone of a large sample of nearby stars for exo-Earth imaging. To this end, such facilities are expected to be equipped with a…
The Wide Field InfraRed Survey Telescope (WFIRST) is the next NASA astrophysics flagship mission, to follow the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The WFIRST mission was chosen as the top-priority large space mission of the 2010 astronomy…
We describe the sources of stray light and thermal background that affect JWST observations, report actual backgrounds as measured from commissioning and early-science observations, compare these background levels to prelaunch predictions,…
Observing habitable exoplanets that may resemble Earth is a key priority in astronomy that is dependent on not only detecting such worlds, but also ascertaining that apparent signatures of habitability are not due to other sources. Space…
A fraction of the light observed from edge-on disk galaxies is polarized due to two physical effects: selective extinction by dust grains aligned with the magnetic field, and scattering of the anisotropic starlight field. Since the…
The properties of metal thin films have been largely overlooked in discussions of the technical limitations and problems that arise in the field of direct detection of exoplanets. Here, polarization properties and anisotropy properties of…
Scattered light from the objective lens, directly exposed to the intense sunlight, is a dominant source of stray light in internally occulted coronagraphs. The variable stray light, such as the scatter from dust on the objective lens, can…
We investigate the expected correlation between the weak gravitational shear of distant galaxies and the orientation of foreground galaxies, through the use of numerical simulations. This shear-ellipticity correlation can mimic a…
In real telescopes, the optical parameters evolve with time, and the degradation is often not uniform. This introduces variations in the image profile and therefore photo-centre displacements which, unless corrected, may result in…