High etendue UV camera for simultaneous four-color imaging on a single detector.

We describe a high etendue (0.12 cm(2) sr) camera that, without moving parts, simultaneously images four ultraviolet bands centered at 140, 175, 215, and 255 nm on a single detector into a minimum of ~7500 resolution elements. In addition to being an efficient way to make color photometric measurements of a static scene, the camera described here enables detection of spatial and temporal information that can be used to reveal energy dependent physical phenomena to complement the capability of other instruments ranging in complexity from filter wheels to integral field spectrographs.

Flight demonstration of a milliarcsecond pointing system for direct exoplanet imaging.

We present flight results from the optical pointing control system onboard the Planetary Imaging Concept Testbed Using a Rocket Experiment (PICTURE) sounding rocket. PICTURE (NASA mission number: 36.225 UG) was launched on 8 October 2011, from White Sands Missile Range. It attempted to directly image the exozodiacal dust disk of ϵ Eridani (K2V, 3.22 pc) down to an inner radius of 1.5 AU using a visible nulling coronagraph. The rocket attitude control system (ACS) provided 627 milliarcsecond (mas) RMS body pointing (~2'' peak-to-valley). The PICTURE fine pointing system (FPS) successfully stabilized the telescope beam to 5.1 mas (0.02λ/D) RMS using an angle tracker camera and fast steering mirror. This level of pointing stability is comparable to that of the Hubble Space Telescope. We present the hardware design of the FPS, a description of the limiting noise sources and a power spectral density analysis of the FPS and rocket ACS in-flight performance.

Far-ultraviolet astronomical narrowband imaging.

We describe an all-reflective system for narrowband imaging suitable for imaging emission lines in the far ultraviolet. The system, which we call a monochromatic imager, combines a pupil plane grating monochromator with a telescope and camera to image a scene in one or more very narrow bands. The monochromator uses physical stops at its input and output apertures, and, as a result, the system has excellent rejection of out-of-band and off-axis light.