Portable Remote Imaging Spectrometer coastal ocean sensor: design, characteristics, and first flight results.

The design, characteristics, and first test flight results are described of the Portable Remote Imaging Spectrometer, an airborne sensor specifically designed to address the challenges of coastal ocean remote sensing. The sensor incorporates several technologies that are demonstrated for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, in a working system in order to achieve a high performance level in terms of uniformity, signal-to-noise ratio, low polarization sensitivity, low stray light, and high spatial resolution. The instrument covers the 350-1050 nm spectral range with a 2.83 nm sampling per pixel, and a 0.88 mrad instantaneous field of view, with 608 cross-track pixels in a pushbroom configuration. Two additional infrared channels (1240 and 1610 nm) are measured by a spot radiometer housed in the same head. The spectrometer design is based on an optically fast (F/1.8) Dyson design form coupled to a wide angle two-mirror telescope in a configuration that minimizes polarization sensitivity without the use of a depolarizer. A grating with minimum polarization sensitivity and broadband efficiency was fabricated as well as a slit assembly with black (etched) silicon surface to minimize backscatter. First flight results over calibration sites as well as Monterey Bay in California have demonstrated good agreement between in situ and remotely sensed data, confirming the potential value of the sensor to the coastal ocean science community.

High performance testbed for four-beam infrared interferometric nulling and exoplanet detection.

Technology development for a space-based infrared nulling interferometer capable of earthlike exoplanet detection and characterization started in earnest in the last 10 years. At the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the planet detection testbed was developed to demonstrate the principal components of the beam combiner train for a high performance four-beam nulling interferometer. Early in the development of the testbed, the importance of "instability noise" for nulling interferometer sensitivity was recognized, and the four-beam testbed would produce this noise, allowing investigation of methods for mitigating this noise source. The testbed contains the required features of a four-beam combiner for a space interferometer and performs at a level matching that needed for the space mission. This paper describes in detail the design, functions, and controls of the testbed.

Experimental evaluation of achromatic phase shifters for mid-infrared starlight suppression.

Phase shifters are a key component of nulling interferometry, one of the potential routes to enabling the measurement of faint exoplanet spectra. Here, three different achromatic phase shifters are evaluated experimentally in the mid-infrared, where such nulling interferometers may someday operate. The methods evaluated include the use of dispersive glasses, a through-focus field inversion, and field reversals on reflection from antisymmetric flat-mirror periscopes. All three approaches yielded deep, broadband, mid-infrared nulls, but the deepest broadband nulls were obtained with the periscope architecture. In the periscope system, average null depths of 4x10(-5) were obtained with a 25% bandwidth, and 2x10(-5) with a 20% bandwidth, at a central wavelength of 9.5 mum. The best short term nulls at 20% bandwidth were approximately 9x10(-6), in line with error budget predictions and the limits of the current generation of hardware.