A highly stable spectrophotometric capability for the Origins Space Telescope (OST) Mid-infrared Imager, Spectrometer, Coronagraph (MISC)

This paper describes the transit spectrograph designed for the Origins Space Telescope mid-infrared imager, spectrometer, coronagraph (MISC) and its performance derived through analytical formulation and numerical simulation. The transit spectrograph is designed based on a densified pupil spectroscopy design that forms multiple independent spectra on the detector plane and minimizes the systematic noise in the optical system. This design can also block any thermal light incoming into pixels around the transit spectra. The gain fluctuations occurring in the detector and readout electronics are accurately corrected by use of a number of blanked-off pixels. We found that the transit spectrograph for the OST concept 1 with a diameter of 9.3m potentially achieves the photon-noise-limited performance and allows detection of biosignature gases through transmission spectroscopy of transiting planets orbiting late- and middle-M type stars at 10 pc with 60 transit observations.