ESCAPE project: testing active observing strategies for high-contrast imaging in space on the HiCAT testbed

Space Telescopes and Instrumentation: Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter Wave, vol. 951, pp. 182

Abstract

The Roman Space Telescope will be a critical mission to demonstrate high-contrast imaging technologies allowing for the characterisation of exoplanets in reflected light. It will demonstrate $10^{-7}$ contrast limits or better at 3--9 $λ/ D$ separations with active wavefront control for the first time in space. The detection limits for the Coronagraph Instrument are expected to be set by wavefront variations between the science target and the reference star observations. We are investigating methods to use the deformablel mirrors to methodically probe the impact of such variations on the coronagraphic PSF, generating a PSF library during observations of the reference star to optimise the starlight subtraction at post-processing. We are collaborating with STScI to test and validate these methods in lab using the HiCAT tested, a high-contrast imaging lab platform dedicated to system-level developments for future space missions. In this paper, we will present the first applications of these methods on HiCAT.

Authors 8

1. Alexis Lau

   Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille

   Affiliation as printed

   LAM - Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille (Pôle de l'Étoile Site de Château-Gombert 38, rue Frédéric Joliot-Curie 13388 Marseille cedex 13 - France)

2. Élodie Choquet

   Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille

   Affiliation as printed

   LAM - Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille (Pôle de l'Étoile Site de Château-Gombert 38, rue Frédéric Joliot-Curie 13388 Marseille cedex 13 - France)

3. Lisa Altinier

   Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille

   Affiliation as printed

   LAM - Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille (Pôle de l'Étoile Site de Château-Gombert 38, rue Frédéric Joliot-Curie 13388 Marseille cedex 13 - France)

4. Iva Laginja Aachen

   Leiden University · Laboratoire d’études spatiales et d’instrumentation en astrophysique

   Affiliation as printed

   LESIA - Laboratoire d'études spatiales et d'instrumentation en astrophysique = Laboratory of Space Studies and Instrumentation in Astrophysics (5, place Jules Janssen 92190 MEUDON - France)

   Universiteit Leiden = Leiden University (Leiden University | 2300 RA Leiden The Netherlands - Netherlands)

5. Rémi Soummer

   Space Telescope Science Institute

   Affiliation as printed

   STSci - Space Telescope Science Institute (3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA - United States)

6. Laurent A. Pueyo

   Space Telescope Science Institute

   Affiliation as printed

   STSci - Space Telescope Science Institute (3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA - United States)

7. N. Godoy

   Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille

   Affiliation as printed

   LAM - Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille (Pôle de l'Étoile Site de Château-Gombert 38, rue Frédéric Joliot-Curie 13388 Marseille cedex 13 - France)

8. A. Vigan

   Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille

   Affiliation as printed

   LAM - Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille (Pôle de l'Étoile Site de Château-Gombert 38, rue Frédéric Joliot-Curie 13388 Marseille cedex 13 - France)