Planetscope: an exoplanet coronagraph on a balloon platform

Wesley A. Traub; Pin Chen; Brian Kern; Taro Matsuo

doi:10.1117/12.788087

14 July 2008 Planetscope: an exoplanet coronagraph on a balloon platform

Wesley A. Traub, Pin Chen, Brian Kern, Taro Matsuo

Proceedings Volume 7010, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2008: Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter; 70103S (2008) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.788087
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2008, Marseille, France

Abstract

Direct detection of mature exoplanets is possible using a visible-wavelength telescope and coronagraph in the stratosphere. We analyze two sources of dynamic wavefront perturbations: turbulence in the free atmosphere and locally generated turbulence. We find that they are expected to have relatively small effects on the wavefront. We find that neither source should limit observations at 10^-9 contrast levels for planet-star separations of 0.5 arcsec. On this basis, we expect that it is feasible to image and characterize several known radial-velocity exoplanets.

Citation Download Citation

Wesley A. Traub, Pin Chen, Brian Kern, and Taro Matsuo "Planetscope: an exoplanet coronagraph on a balloon platform", Proc. SPIE 7010, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2008: Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter, 70103S (14 July 2008); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.788087

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