Speaker
Description
In the quest to develop ever-more advanced space telescopes, stray light (SL) increasingly emerges as a primary limiting factor. SL, which arises from ghost reflections and scattering, degrades image quality by reducing resolution and introducing artifacts. This is especially problematic for telescopes tasked with observing faint objects or small variations in their intensity. SL must be controlled by design and characterized experimentally prior to launch. However, we have reached the limits of the conventional methods. This talk will address this problem and the many challenges that it involves. In particular we will present the results of the SL control in the Metop-3MI instrument, for which we have stretched the capacities to their utmost extremes. Moreover, we will present the development of a novel method using a pulse laser illumination, the Time-of-Flight (ToF) characterization.
