THEIA: Telescope for Habitable Exoplanets and Interstellar/Intergalactic Astronomy
Abstract
By combining an occultor with a 4-meter optical/ultraviolet telescope, THEIA (Telescope for Habiatable Earths and Interstellar/Intergalactic Astronomy) will conduct an observational program that address many of the most exciting questions in astrophysics.
The telescope is an on-axis telescope with a MgF-coated primary and a LiF-coated secondary. This hybrid approach allows reasonable through-put in the UV without the need to coat a large piimary with LiF. The coronagraph/occultor system is also a hybrid that aims to reduce the requirements on each approach. The telescope feeds a rich instrument complement. The eXtrasolar Planet Characterizer (XPC) baseline instruments are three narrow-field cameras for the UV (0.25-4.0 microns), blue (0.4-0.7 microns) and red (0.7-1.0 microns) with filters, and an integral field spectrograph (IFS) operating in the red. A wide-field high-resolution camera (Star Formation Camera) operating with a blue (190--517nm) and a red (517--1075nm) channel will conduct a comprehensive and systematic study of the astrophysical processes and environments relevant for the births and life cycles of stars and their planetary systems. A UV high-resolution spectrograph (UVS) with R=30,000-100,000 in the far-UV (1000-1700 A) and near-UV (1700-3000 A) will strengthen the foundations of observational cosmology by examining the cosmic web (IGM), its interactions with galaxies, and its enrichment with the products of stellar and galactic evolution. This mission has two basic opseration modes. While the occultor is moving from target star to target star, the telescope carries out an exciting program of general astrophysics. While the occultor is on target, it will characterize the key properties of a detected planet and deeply image adjacent fields in parallel mode.- Publication:
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American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #213
- Pub Date:
- January 2009
- Bibcode:
- 2009AAS...21345804S