Stray Light Analysis

Increasing demands on sensitivity, dynamic range, and the precision of modern optical systems bring with them an unwelcome guest: stray light. Stray light is unwanted radiation that destroys image contrast and image quality, causes errors in radiometric measurements, and sometimes even damages expensive optical components or detectors. Ghosts, veiling glare, and thermal emissions can keep an instrument from meeting its performance specifications. Breault engineers are respected worldwide as leaders in stray light analysis. A Breault stray light analysis identifies the root causes of stray light, and focuses attention on design changes that do the most good.

Breault Research Organization performs stray light analyses and designs baffles for space instruments, satellites, laboratory instruments, and commercial optical products. We calculate stray light backgrounds from scatter and ghost reflections off optical components; scatter and glints from baffles, vanes, struts, and spiders; diffraction around edges and apertures; and thermal radiation. With help from Breault, you can expect improved system performance, reduced development cycles, and reduced costs in engineering time and hardware prototyping. Your optical device will perform as expected.

A Breault Stray Light Analysis:

Identifies the largest stray light paths
Calculates their absolute and relative contributions
Determines if a system meets its requirements
Recommends design enhancements to improve system performance

The Most Advanced Optical Software

ASAP™ optical analysis software was developed in-house to meet the unique challenges of stray light analysis. Accurate and fast stray light calculations cannot be done with simple brute-force Monte Carlo calculations. That is why ASAP uses directed scatter methods to send scattered light towards the areas of most interest.

Key ASAP Features used in Stray Light Analysis Projects:

ASAP calculates stray light from scatter
ASAP models scatter within three-dimensional geometries
ASAP uses realistic BRDF models
ASAP calculates stray light from ghosts
ASAP does diffraction calculations
ASAP calculates thermal irradiance

We are Experienced

Breault has been doing stray light analyses for over 20 years and has completed over 200 stray light projects, including the Infra-Red Astronomy Satellite (IRAS), SIRTF, ISO, MERIS, Galileo, Cassini, and ESA's X-Ray Mirror Module Telescope (XMM). In fact, Breault's first contract was a stray light analysis of the Hubble Space Telescope. Breault increased Hubble's ability to "see" by a factor of 100,000. We've been helping people manage light ever since.

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Project Expertise