Sizing of a Raven-Class Telescope Using Performance Sensitivities

This work details the sizing and selection of a Raven-class telescope to be constructed at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and seeks to make four main contributions. The first is a concise yet comprehensive summary of important sizing relationships and meaningful assumptions that comprise a design methodology for Raven-class telescopes. The second is the computation of local sensitivity relationships, which identify the variables that have the greatest impact on Raven system performance metrics. The third is the development of a novel performance metric that measures the amount of information generated by a single Raven. The derived sensitivities can be used to quantify the amount of improvement in system performance per unit cost. Finally, Raven system performance metrics are used to construct several Pareto frontiers for Ravens operating in different optical environments. The most important insight provided by these Pareto frontiers is that the conventional wisdom for utilizing short focal lengths and large pixel sizes to realize the best detection capability does not hold for Raven-class telescopes located in optically noisy environments, such as Atlanta. These plots also highlight the diminishing return of increasingly large aperture diameters, demonstrating the value of the Raven design paradigm.