Collection of peer-reviewed starshade research to help advance exoplanet imaging by space telescopes

BELLINGHAM, Washington, USA - The Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems (JATIS) has published a special section on the latest science, engineering, research, and programmatic advances of starshades, the starlight-suppression technology integral to extra-solar and exoplanet detection.

Section topics range from starshade programs and missions, to various aspects of related technologies, including formation flying, deployment, high-contrast imaging, and performance modeling. Together, the 19 open access articles provide an extensive overview and current status of this exponentially growing field.

"The starshade is a technology that has seen rapid development and wide interest at many institutions," the editors write in their introduction. "Many of the advances in this field are spread over many journals and meetings. As a result they are difficult to collect in a single location in order to get a good view of the state of starshades.... As interest in developing starshade-based missions grows, we hope that this special section will serve as a tutorial, providing enough of a background for potential investigators who are not familiar with starshades to have a current overview of the field in one location."

"NASA's starshade technology development activity," "Antireflection coatings on starshade optical edges for solar glint suppression," "Exoplanet imaging performance envelopes for starshade-based missions," and "Mapping the observable sky for a Remote Occulter working with ground-based telescopes" are just a few of the articles featured in this collection of open access papers.

The special section guest editors - Jonathan W. Arenberg, of Northrop Grumman, Anthony D. Harness, of Princeton University, and Rebecca M. Jensen-Clem, of the University of California, Santa Cruz - are all members of the NASA-chartered Starshade Science and Industry Partnership's Technology and Science Working Group.

JATIS is one of 12 journals published by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, on its Digital Library platform.

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