Cady Eric, Kasdin N J, Shaklan Stuart
Dept. of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
Opt Express. 2010 Jan 18;18(2):523-43. doi: 10.1364/OE.18.000523.
One of the proposed methods for finding small extrasolar planets is through use of an occulter, a spacecraft which flies in formation with a space-based telescope to block the light from a star, while leaving nearby planets unaffected. This is accomplished by placing the occulter far enough from the telescope to give it a small angular size, and by carefully choosing the shape to strongly suppress the starlight at the telescope aperture. For most designs, this shape takes the form of a number of bilaterally-symmetric structures called petals, arrayed about a circular central disk. In this paper, we show that the necessary number of petals may be reduced by the introduction of an asymmetry in the petal shape, and describe a a general procedure for producing such a shape by optimization for any occulter with petals. In addition, we show that permitting openings within each petal allows a number of additional modifications to be made without affecting the suppression.
一种寻找太阳系外小行星的提议方法是使用遮光板，这是一种与天基望远镜编队飞行的航天器，用于阻挡恒星的光线，同时不影响附近的行星。这是通过将遮光板放置在离望远镜足够远的地方，使其具有较小的角尺寸，并仔细选择形状以强烈抑制望远镜孔径处的星光来实现的。对于大多数设计，这种形状采用一些称为花瓣的双侧对称结构的形式，围绕着一个圆形中心盘排列。在本文中，我们表明通过在花瓣形状中引入不对称性，可以减少所需的花瓣数量，并描述了一种通过优化为任何带有花瓣的遮光板生成这种形状的一般程序。此外，我们表明允许每个花瓣内有开口可以进行许多额外的修改而不影响抑制效果。
