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Accessing Small Inner Working Angles with a Rotating Sub-aperture Nuller

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 May 2006

E. Serabyn
Affiliation:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA, email: [email protected]
B. Mennesson
Affiliation:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA, email: [email protected]
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Abstract

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A new approach to high contrast observations near bright stars with a single-aperture telescope is discussed, which is based on the idea of a rotating separated-aperture nulling interferometer. The approach can be described as a rotating sub-aperture nuller, because it nulls two or more sub-apertures within a single telescope's pupil, and uses baseline rotation to modulate the signals from off-axis sources in a manner similar to that of potential space-based nulling interferometers. The sub-aperture beams can be combined in a number of ways, including a fiber nuller and a rotational shearing interferometer. Such a rotating nulling coronagraph has two great advantages. First, it can be used on a ground-based telescope to test signal reconstruction approaches pertinent to potential space-based nulling interferometers. Moreover, it also has the potential to enable ground-based coronagraphic observations of faint off-axis companions very close to bright stars.

Type
Contributed Papers
Copyright
© 2006 International Astronomical Union