STIS Coronagraphy Visualization Tool (v1)

Developed by K. Ward-Duong (kwduong@stsci.edu), last revision 2021-03-22


Introduction: STIS Coronagraphy Planning and Occulters

Some of the most important steps in planning and preparing coronagraphic observations with STIS involve:

  1. selecting the appropriate occulter position (from the various supported fiducial apertures, visualized in the figure below on an on-orbit lamp flatfield)
  2. determining the appropriate orientation of the observatory to conduct science observations, often at multiple telescope roll angles to provide angular diversity of imaging for the purposes of post-processing.

Considerations for these decisions include avoiding the locations of the central star’s diffraction spikes relative to any scientific feature(s) of interest, and verifying the true north angle of the CCD detector to understand where a given companion or disk feature might be located.

To this end, the functions and examples in this notebook are meant to be an illustrative guide to visualizing possible aperture+companion+orientation configurations.

Drawing

Postions of STIS supported coronagraphic apertures, including the two WEDGEs and two BARs. Note that the full STIS field of view is 50" x 50".


Guide to Usage

The purpose of this notebook is to provide a function to visualize the STIS detector orientation for various astrophysical scenes and instrumental/telescope configurations. Examples below include a simple star+companion scene, and a star+disk scene, in order to determine the visibility of the scientific feature of interest relative to the STIS occulter of choice, stellar diffraction spikes, and true north angle.

The function _showorients is used to display images and takes the following keywords:

inputs
----------------
orients       : (float or list) single ORIENT value or list of values 
aperture      : (str) which STIS occulting aperture position to use. Valid options are:
                        'BAR10', 'BAR5', 'WEDGEA0.6', 'WEDGEA1.0', 'WEDGEA2.0', 'WEDGEB1.0' 
fov           : (float) region of the detector to display, in arcsec                            
feature       : (str) whether to display a point source companion or extended disk ("companion" or "disk")
featurepa     : (float) position angle of feature of interest in degrees E of N 
postarg       : (tuple) x, y offset from the fiducial aperture in arcsec. Default is no offset (0,0)
avoidspikes   : (float, default=20) 'avoidance' region to avoid stellar diffraction spikes    

optional arguments
-----------------
featuresep    : (float) separation of companion
disk_height   : (float) semiminor axis of the disk in arcsec
disk_width    : (float) semimajor axis of the disk in arcsec

Some additional notes:


Set up the primary function, _showorients


Example #1: Star with a companion (visible)

In the example below, the properties of the point-source companion are defined in-line in the function call directly. The resulting image shows the following features:

Note that at this ORIENT angle, the companion would be visible and unaffected by scattered light from the diffraction spikes. This configuration also avoids accidental placement behind the occulter.


Example #2: Star with a companion (obscured)

In this example, the set-up is the same as in Example #1 and the only changed parameter is the ORIENT angle, resulting in an obscured companion behind the BAR10 occulter.

Here, the configuration is virtually identical to Example #1 in terms of companion properties and occulter selection, but the ORIENT angle of the observatory has been changed from 195º in the previous example to 33º.

At this ORIENT angle, the companion would not only lie within the diffraction spike avoidance region (red shaded area), but would also be partially obscured by the BAR10 occulter itself.


Example #3: Star with a simple circumstellar disk

This example shows a simple disk feature, where the central star has been placed behind the WEDGEA1.0 occulter. The selected parameters are as follows: