Prospects for exoplanet imaging in multi-star systems with starshades

Dan Sirbu, Ruslan Belikov, Eduardo Bendek, Elias Holte, A J Eldorado Riggs, Stuart Shaklan
(Submitted on 31 Aug 2017)

We explore the capabilities of a starshade mission to directly image multi-star systems. In addition to the diffracted and scattered light for the on-axis star, a multi-star system features additional starlight leakage from the off-axis star that must also be controlled. A basic option is for additional starshades to block the off-axis stars. An interesting option takes the form of hybrid operation of a starshade in conjunction with an internal starlight suppression. Two hybrid scenarios are considered. One such scenario includes the coronagraph instrument blocking the on-axis star, with the starshade blocking off-axis starlight. Another scenario uses the wavefront control system in the coronagraph instrument and using a recent Super-Nyquist Wavefront Control (SNWC) technique can remove the off-axis stellar leakage to enable a region of high-contrast around the on-axis star blocked by the starshade.We present simulation results relevant for the WFIRST telescope.

Comments:    13 pages, 9 figures, Proceedings of SPIE
Subjects:    Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
Cite as:    arXiv:1709.00041 [astro-ph.IM]
     (or arXiv:1709.00041v1 [astro-ph.IM] for this version)
Submission history
From: Dan Sirbu
[v1] Thu, 31 Aug 2017 18:54:06 GMT (10825kb,D)
https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.00041