Advanced camera for surveys coronagraph on the Hubble Space Telescope

John E. Krist; George F. Hartig; Mark Clampin; David A. Golimowski; Holland C. Ford; Garth D. Illingworth

doi:10.1117/12.457835

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3 March 2003 Advanced Camera for Surveys coronagraph on the Hubble Space Telescope

John E. Krist, George F. Hartig, Mark Clampin, David A. Golimowski, Holland C. Ford, Garth D. Illingworth

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 4860, High-Contrast Imaging for Exo-Planet Detection; (2003) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.457835
Event: Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation, 2002, Waikoloa, Hawai'i, United States

Abstract

The Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) was installed in the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) during Servicing Mission 3B in early 2002. It includes a High Resolution Camera (0.025 arcsec/pixel) with a selectable coronagraphic mode. Because it was added after construction began on the instrument, this classical Lyot coronagraph must operate on the uncorrected, spherically aberrated beam from HST. The occulting spot is placed at the circle of least confusion, requiring relatively large spot diameters of 1.8 and 3.0 arcseconds. The Lyot stop is placed at the correcting mirror that compensates for spherical aberration. Despite this non-optimal configuration, the diffraction pattern is reduced by a factor of 5-10x, bringing it below the level of light scattered by the mid-spatial-frequency errors in the HST optics. Together with PSF subtraction, the PSF wings can be reduced by over 1000x. The coronagraph will provide high-resolution, high-contrast imaging over a large wavelength range (200-1000 nm).

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John E. Krist, George F. Hartig, Mark Clampin, David A. Golimowski, Holland C. Ford, and Garth D. Illingworth "Advanced Camera for Surveys coronagraph on the Hubble Space Telescope", Proc. SPIE 4860, High-Contrast Imaging for Exo-Planet Detection, (3 March 2003); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.457835

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