Guest Editorial: Overview of the Special Issue and a Dialog on Starshades

TL;DR

This special issue compiles recent research, tutorials, and discussions on starshades, a rapidly evolving technology for space-based astronomy, aiming to unify scattered knowledge and broaden community engagement.

Contribution

It consolidates 19 recent papers on starshades, providing a comprehensive overview and tutorial to foster further research and collaboration in the field.

Findings

Summarizes recent advances in starshade technology

Provides a tutorial and FAQ to educate new researchers

Highlights the interdisciplinary nature of starshade research

Abstract

This special issue is dedicated to starshades: science, engineering, technology and programmatics. Our reasons for organizing this special issue are several fold. First as a new technology and with research accomplished in many institutions, recent results are widely scattered in the literature. As such, we see great value in co-locating many of the most recent results. This guest editorial summarizes the 19 contributed papers as the result of a special call for papers. Since this is a rapidly maturing technology, we wanted to co-locate a primer with the most current work in the field. It is hoped that this primer will provide a tutorial to the starshade concept and pathway to the literature not in this issue. In doing so, we hope to widen the starshade community in terms of engineering and scientific engagements. This tutorial takes the form of a dialog, where frequently asked questions are answered.