Abstract
The New World Observer has the potential to discover and study planets around other stars without expensive and risky technical heroics. We describe the starshade, a large, deployable sheet on a separate spacecraft that is flown into position along the line of sight to a nearby star. We show how a starshade can be designed and built in a practical and affordable manner to fully remove starlight and leave only planet light entering a telescope. The simulations demonstrate That NWI can detect planetary system features as faint as comets, perform spectroscopy to look for water and life signs, and perform photometry to search for oceans, continents, clouds and polar caps.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 58990S |
| Pages (from-to) | 1-12 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Journal | Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering |
| Volume | 5899 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2005 |
| Event | UV/Optical/IR Space Telescopes: Innovative Technologies and Concepts II - San Diego, CA, United States Duration: Jul 31 2005 → Aug 1 2005 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
- Condensed Matter Physics
- Computer Science Applications
- Applied Mathematics
- Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Keywords
- Astrobiology
- Coronography
- Exoplanets