Abstract
The large UV/optical/IR surveyor (LUVOIR) is a concept for a highly capable, multiwavelength space observatory with ambitious science goals. Finding and characterizing a wide range of exoplanets, including those that might be habitable, is a major goal of the study. The ambitious science goals drive the challenges of optical design. This paper will present how the optical design meets the unique challenges for coronagraphs on large telescopes to achieve high contrast for a wide wavelength range from 200 to 2000 nm. Some of these unique challenges include the position and size of occulter masks, deformable mirror placement and separation, tight tolerances on the optical system and each element, and finally, packaging all instruments in a limited space. Three types of modules are designed after the coronagraph to explore the exoplanets and analyze the spectrum of detected exoplanet signals: two imaging cameras, two integral field spectrographs, and one high-resolution spectrometer. All of them work together to provide information to meet scientific challenges in searching for habitable planets. The optical designs, unique challenges, and the solutions for all coronagraph and spectral modules are presented. Their specifications derived from science goals are also presented.
Highlights
The main goals of large UV/optical/IR surveyor (LUVOIR) are to investigate astrophysics, exoplanets, the cosmic origins, and the Solar System.[1]
The analysis shows that the coronagraph is diffraction limited at all mask planes for the shortest wavelength of each channel, which is one of the requirements that is specific to the coronagraph optical design
From an optical design point of view, the design for the integral field spectrographs (IFS) in the optical channel is quite challenging due to the following reasons: (1) It requires a higher spectral resolving power; (2) the dispersion of glass material is much higher at shorter wavelengths than at longer wavelengths, so chromatic aberration is more difficult to control; (3) relatively large detector size; Fig. 6 The optical channel relay design provides a focus of f ∕481.5 beam onto the surface of the lenslet array for making the full width half max (FWHM) of the point spread function (PSF) meet the Nyquist sampling at λ 1⁄4 515 nm
Summary
The main goals of large UV/optical/IR surveyor (LUVOIR) are to investigate astrophysics, exoplanets, the cosmic origins, and the Solar System.[1]. The ECLIPS instrument in the LUVOIR mission is aimed to elevate the study to a stage: exploring the full diversity of exoplanets; discovering and characterizing exoplanets in the habitable zones of Sun-like stars across a range of ages; and searching for biosignatures in their atmospheres, in a survey large enough to provide evidence for (or against) the presence of habitable planets and life.[3] To achieve these ambitious goals, a large telescope is necessary. Another important engineering factor is that the whole ECLIPS instrument must fit into the allocated mass and volume to guarantee mission success. The first-order optical design requirements are driven not by the telescope aperture size, but rather by constraints placed on the pupil and image planes internal to the ECLIPS instrument.
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