Title
Hg-Mask coronagraph
Date Issued
01 January 2004
Access level
metadata only access
Resource Type
conference paper
Author(s)
Institut de Mécanique Céleste et de Calcul des Éphémérides
Publisher(s)
EDP Sciences
Abstract
In order to optimize the occulting process of a Lyot coronagraph and to provide a high dynamic range imaging, a new kind of occulting disk has been developed at the National Observatory of Rio de Janeiro. A mercury (Hg) drop glued onto an optical window by molecular cohesion and compressed by a pellicle film is used as the occulting disk. The minimum of the superficial tension potential function provides an optical precision (lambda/100) of the toric free surface of the mercury. This process provides a size control for the adaptation to the seeing conditions and to the apparent diameter of a resolved object, and in the case of adaptive optics, to the Airy diameter fraction needed. The occultation is a three dimensional process near the focal plane on the toric free surface that provides an apodization of the occultation. The Hg-Mask coronagraph has been projected for astrometric observations of faint satellites near to Jovian planets and works since 2000 at the 1.6 m telescope of the Pico dos Dias Observatory (OPD - Brazil). © EAS, EDP Sciences 2004.
Start page
205
End page
211
Volume
12
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Astronomía
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-28844495374
ISSN of the container
16334760
Conference
EAS Publications Series - Astronomy with High Contrast Imaging II: Instrumentation for Coronagraphy and Nulling Interferometry
Sources of information:
Directorio de Producción Científica
Scopus