Achieving high-contrast ratios with a 60-cm starshade

Tiffany Glassman; Suzanne Casement; Steven Warwick; Onur Armagan; John Donovan

doi:10.1117/12.2022785

26 September 2013 Achieving high-contrast ratios with a 60-cm starshade

Tiffany Glassman, Suzanne Casement, Steven Warwick, Onur Armagan, John Donovan

Proceedings Volume 8864, Techniques and Instrumentation for Detection of Exoplanets VI; 886418 (2013) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2022785
Event: SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications, 2013, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

The external starshade is a prospective method for the direct detection and spectral characterization of terrestrial planets around other stars, a key goal identified in ASTRO2010. Validation of the numerical simulations that are critical to this approach has been challenging at very small scales (~4 cm) in the lab. We have successfully fabricated 60 cm starshades and begun a series of ground test experiments with them. We measured contrast better than 1×10^-8 under challenging environmental conditions at outdoor test sites. Our experimental setup is designed to provide starshade to telescope separation and telescope aperture size that are scaled as closely as possible from the flight system. In this paper, we describe the test setup, the data acquisition, the reduction techniques, and a preliminary comparison of measured to modeled results.

Citation Download Citation

Tiffany Glassman, Suzanne Casement, Steven Warwick, Onur Armagan, and John Donovan "Achieving high-contrast ratios with a 60-cm starshade", Proc. SPIE 8864, Techniques and Instrumentation for Detection of Exoplanets VI, 886418 (26 September 2013); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2022785

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