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R. A. Brown (Space Telescope Science Institute)
The idea of a Hubble instrument taking pictures of planets around other stars goes back to NASA's 1977 call for the first-generation instruments. The idea became feasible only in the 1990s, due to the development of deformable mirror (DM) technology, which can correct wavefront errors to permit the deep suppression of off-axis starlight. Today, various scientific and technical groups are studying--largely independently--a four-meter-class ultraviolet-optical successor to Hubble and a four-meter-class optical-ultraviolet telescope for the Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) mission. NASA's selectable rating of a planet-finding DM coronagraph (CODEX) for Hubble in 1997 provides anecdotal support for the emerging case that TPF and HST2 could and should be the same mission. In this scenario, a DM coronagraph for planet finding and other high-dynamic-range imaging would be one of several focal-plane instruments for general astrophysical research in the Hubble paradigm. This paper discusses the performance and scientific benefits of DM coronagraphs on Hubble-type telescopes.
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The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: rbrown@stsci.edu
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 35 #3
© 2003. The American Astronomical Soceity.