Hypertelescope with multiplexed fields of view.

Abstract

Hypertelescope interferometers having many highly diluted sub-apertures are capable of directly imaging, within a narrow field of view, celestial objects at a high resolution thanks to pupil densification. This Letter verifies with OpticStudio modeling the possibility of simultaneously imaging multiple such fields. A strategy of multi-field sampling uses a microlens array to generate multiplexed field channels, where independent active corrections of the tip-tilt and piston are applied for compensating for the off-axis aberrations. Adopting this strategy, we have designed a model of a multi-field hypertelescope with OpticStudio. The reported design expands the observing performance of hypertelescopes for directly imaging multiple sources with very high angular resolution.