The New Worlds Observer, currently studied under a NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts grant, will be a pinhole camera in space designed to directly detect and study extrasolar terrestrial planets. An apodized occultor or pinhole creates an image of the planetary system in the focal plane far away, where a second telescope craft orbits to detect the light. In this study we simulate the expected signal of NWO to find the optimal configuration and specifications of the two craft. The efficiency of direct detection through photometric imaging depends strongly on occulter and telescope size, while preliminary studies on absorption biomarker detection and photometric variability measurements are summarized.

Date Published: 5 October 2005
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 5905, Techniques and Instrumentation for Detection of Exoplanets II, 59051G (5 October 2005); doi: 10.1117/12.617478

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 5905:
Techniques and Instrumentation for Detection of Exoplanets II
Daniel R. Coulter, Editor(s)