Strategies to mitigate effects of pointing error for the TOLIMAN space telescope

The TOLIMAN space telescope is purpose-built to probe our stellar neighbourhood for potentially habitable Earth-like exoplanets. Our novel diffractive pupil design will allow TOLIMAN to detect extremely subtle changes in the positions of stars in a binary system, down to the microarcsecond scale. One of the many challenging factors in the detection of this diminutive astrometric signal is instability in the telescope pointing, known as jitter. <br/> <br clear="all"/> This work demonstrates the capability of mitigating the blurring effects of telescope jitter through a forward modelling approach and a new precise optical positioning system. We utilise ∂Lux – a cutting-edge differentiable optical simulation framework built in Jax by our team at the University of Sydney – to model the effects of telescope jitter on the final image. The demanding stability requirements have also inspired innovative engineering approaches, including the design of a piezo-driven tip/tilt system. This methodology enables us to recover the crucial astrometric parameters despite telescope pointing instability, offering TOLIMAN the unique opportunity to observe exoplanetary signatures with unprecedented precision.