Abstract
The Wide Aperture Exoplanet Telescope (WAET) is a ground-based optical telescope layout in which one dimension of a filled aperture can be made very large (beyond 100 m) at low cost and complexity. With an unusual beam path but otherwise conventional optics, we obtain a fully steerable telescope on a low-rise mount with a fixed-gravity vector on key components. Numerous design considerations and scaling laws suggest that WAET can be far less expensive than other giant segmented mirror telescopes.
Highlights
The Wide Aperture Exoplanet Telescope (WAET) is a ground-based optical telescope layout in which one dimension of a filled aperture can be made very large at low cost and complexity
We argue that WAET systems can be built at extremely low cost
When wind is moving parallel to the narrow axis of the aperture, the adaptive optics (AO) loop cannot anticipate them with predictive control algorithms; if this is a hard limit, WAET might not progress past the contrast ratio floors associated with frame rates and servo lag
Summary
We survey the basic WAET operating principles and preview some of the advantages and disadvantages of the design. Both figures show Ritchey-Chrétien optics here but this is not a general requirement
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