Circumstellar dust: performance, calibration, and science with the Roman Coronagraph
A report from Science says the Roman Coronagraph (RC) will advance understanding of how well the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) can study rocky planets, giant planets, and dusty debris, and should produce the first direct detection of a giant planet in reflected starlight while providing unprecedented views of the spatial structure and scattering properties of circumstellar dust.
The strong potential of RC polarimetry can break disk modeling degeneracies and extract information on the size, composition and porosity of scattering particles. The authors propose using the needs of exozodi and debris disk imaging to motivate investigations of instrument performance and calibration for extended sources.