In preparation for the operational phase of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, NASA has created the Coronagraph Community Participation Program (CPP) to prepare for and execute Coronagraph Instrument technology demonstration observations. The CPP is composed of 7 small, US-based teams, selected competitively via the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Research and Support Participation Opportunity, members of the Roman Project Team, and international partner teams from ESA, JAXA, CNES, and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy. The primary goals of the CPP are to prepare simulation tools, target databases, and data reduction software for the execution of the Coronagraph Instrument observation phase. Here, we present the current status of the CPP and its working groups, along with plans for future CPP activities up through Roman’s launch. We also discuss plans to potentially enable future commissioning of currently-unsupported modes.
The Coronagraphic Instrument onboard the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is an important stepping stone towards the characterization of habitable, rocky exoplanets. In a technology demonstration phase conducted during the first 18 months of the mission (expected to launch in late 2026), novel starlight suppression technology may enable direct imaging of a Jupiter analog in reflected light. Here we summarize the current activities of the Observation Planning working group formed as part of the Community Participation Program. This working group is responsible for target selection and observation planning of both science and calibration targets in the technology demonstration phase of the Roman Coronagraph. We will discuss the ongoing efforts to expand target and reference catalogs, and to model astrophysical targets (exoplanets and circumstellar disks) within the Coronagraph’s expected sensitivity. We will also present preparatory observations of high priority targets.
Operating in an unprecedented contrast regime (10 − 7 to 10 − 9), the Roman Coronagraph Instrument (CGI) will serve as a pathfinder for key technologies needed for future Earth-finding missions such as HabEx and LUVOIR. The Roman Exoplanet Imaging Data Challenge (Roman EIDC) was a community engagement effort that tasked participants with extracting exoplanets and their orbits for a 47-UMa-like target star given: (1) 15 years of simulated precursor radial velocity (RV) data and (2) six epochs of simulated imaging taken over the course of the Roman mission. Led by the Turnbull CGI Science Investigation Team, the Roman EIDC was preceded by four tutorial “hack-a-thon” events in Baltimore, Pasadena, New York City, and Tokyo. The Roman EIDC officially launched in October 2019 and ran for 8 months, offering a unique opportunity for exoplanet scientists of all experience levels to get acquainted with realistic near-future imaging data. The Roman EIDC simulated images include four epochs with CGI’s Hybrid Lyot Coronagraph (HLC) plus two epochs with a starshade (SS) assumed to arrive as part of a Starshade Rendezvous later in the mission. We focus on our in-house analysis of the outermost planet “d,” for which the SS’s higher throughput and lower noise floor present a factor of ∼4 improvement in the signal-to-noise ratio over the narrow-field HLC. We find that, although the RV detection was marginal for planet d, the precursor RV data enabled the mass and orbit to be constrained with only two epochs of SS imaging. Including the HLC images in the analysis results in improved measurements over RV + SS alone, with the greatest gains resulting from images taken at epochs near maximum elongation. Combining the two epochs of SS imaging with the RV + HLC data resulted in a factor of ∼2 better orbit and mass determinations over RV + HLC alone. In summary, the Roman CGI, combined with precursor RV data and latermission SS imaging, forms a powerful trifecta in detecting exoplanets and determining their masses, albedos, and system configurations. While the Roman CGI will break new scientific and technological ground with direct imaging of giant exoplanets within ∼5 AU of V ˜ 5 and brighter stars, a Roman Starshade Rendezvous mission would additionally enable the detection of planets out to ∼8 AU in those systems.
Organized by the Turnbull Science Investigation Team (SIT), the 2019-2020 Roman Exoplanet Imaging Data Challenge (EIDC) launched in mid October 2019 and ran for eight months. This data challenge was a unique opportunity for exoplanet scientists of all backgrounds and experience levels to get acquainted with realistic Roman CGI (coronagraphic) simulated data with a new contrast regimes at 10-8 to 10-9 enabling to unveil planets down to the Neptune-mass in reflected light. Participating teams had to recover the astrometry of an exoplanetary system combining precursor radial velocity data (also simulated across 15 years) with two to six coronagraphic imaging epochs (HLC and Star Shade). They had to perform accurate orbital fitting and determine the mass of any planet hidden in the data. It involved PSF subtraction techniques, post-processing and other astrophysics hurdles to overcome such as contamination sources (stellar, extragalactic and exozodiacal light). We organized four tutorial "hack-a-thon" events to get as many people on-board. The EIDC proved to be an excellent way to engage with the intricacies of the first mission to perform wavefront control in space, as a pathfinder to future flagship missions. It also generated a lot of positive interactions between open source package owners and a whole new set of young exoplanet scientists running them. As a community we are a few steps closer to being ready to analyze real CGI data!
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