Holographic Optical Method for Exoplanet Spectroscopy (HOMES)

HOMES (Holographic Optical Method for Exoplanet Spectroscopy) is a space telescope that employs a double dispersion architecture, using a holographic optical element as a primary objective in conjunction with a novel secondary spectral interferometer. Unlike mirrors and lenses, the holograms are thin and flat, can be fabricated on thin gossamer membranes and stretched over space frames covering thousands of square meters. HOMES (Holographic Optical Method for Exoplanet Spectroscopy) is a space telescope designed for exoplanet discovery. Its double dispersion architecture employs a holographic optical element as a primary objective in conjunction with a novel secondary spectral interferometer. Unlike mirrors and lenses, the holograms are thin and flat. They can be fabricated on thin gossamer membranes and stretched over space frames covering thousands of square meters. This provides the scale of collector needed to capture the photons from very faint sources like exoplanets and bring them to a focus. Because holographic optics focus by the process of dispersion, they are intrinsically spectrographic providing a wealth of detail about the composition of the images they form. Add to this a novel notch filter to dim the star that takes advantage of the spectrographic image, and HOMES is a concept that addresses the demanding specifications of a telescope to find habitable planets within 30 light years of earth.