Design of polychromatic PSFs for the COROT experiment.pdfVIP

Design of polychromatic PSFs for the COROT experiment a b a A.Llebaria , M.Auvergne and S.Perruchot aLaboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille (CNRS/Univ de Provence), traverse du Syphon, 13012 Marseille. bLESIA Observatoire de Paris 5 place J. Janssen 92195 Meudon ABSTRACT COROT is a mission of the CNES space agency, to be launched in 2005 in a Polar orbit. Its main goals are the search of stellar oscillation and the exoplanet detection. Five star fields chosen close to the galactic plane and in the opposite direction will be observed with an high photometric stability. Four 2048x2048 CCD detectors cover two detection areas one for asteroseismology and the other for exoplanets detection. To avoid the saturation risk the seismology area is just in front of focal plane; in the exoplanet area a low power prism disperses the images to get color information about each observed star.. This paper presents the procedure used to deduce the polychromatic PSFs for both the seismology and the exoplanets detection areas depending on position and star color indexes. The use of standard optical packages, the expected inaccuracies and performances are discussed. 1. INTRODUCTION CoRoT, standing for Convection, Rotation and planetary Transits, is a mission of the French spatial agency CNES Centre National dEtudes Spatiales)) in association with an ESA and several Europeans countries. (Rouan 2000a, Rouan 2000b). CoRoT is an orbital telescope embedded on a PROTEUS platform, devoted to asteroseismology and to detect a few hot earth