The telescope for a Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) coronagraph has exceedingly stringent phase and amplitude requirements, especially for the large, monolithic primary mirror (possibly as large as 4 meters by 10 meters). The pertinent derived engineering requirements will be summarized based on a described set of science objectives to simulate solar type stars and their companion earth-size planets. We will also present an optical design for a sub-scale coronagraphic testbed as an essential step in examining the system sensitivities. The major subassemblies of the testbed include: 1) a star/planet simulator that affords variation in contrast, adjustable relative separation and angular orientation and 2) a relay optical system representative of a TPF 3-mirror telescope that allows the imposition of known optical perturbations over the desired wavefront spatial frequencies. We will compare these TPF testbed mirror wavefront requirements with levels recently achieved on the Advanced Mirror System Demonstrator and planned for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

Date Published: 12 October 2004
PDF: 12 pages
Proc. SPIE 5487, Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter Space Telescopes, (12 October 2004); doi: 10.1117/12.549465

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 5487:
Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter Space Telescopes
John C. Mather, Editor(s)