Coronal and Heliospheric imaging with Achromatic Metasurfaces Pathfinder (CHAMP)

White light observations of the solar corona are crucial for understanding large-scale coronal structures and examining the evolution of solar transients, such as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which have important space weather impacts. We seek to develop technology for producing high-resolution, wide-FOV maps of the white light corona with reduced instrument size and complexity. With conventional optical designs, scanning the corona with a small instantaneous FOV or accommodating a telescope on a spinning or non-solar centered spacecraft would require large/complex gimbaled systems. To avoid these complex systems, conventional heliospheric imagers are designed with a wide FOV, sacrificing spatial resolution and throughput for coverage. To address this need, we have designed a visible light telescope which uses novel achromatic metasurface Risley prisms (MRPs) to create high-resolution, wide-FOV maps of the solar corona in a small form factor: the Coronal and Heliospheric imaging with Achromatic Metasurfaces Pathfinder (CHAMP). MRPs enable rapid mapping of a large FOV with a small instantaneous FOV, and features of interest (e.g., CMEs, comets, etc.) can be tracked using optimized scanning patterns. Here we present the preliminary concept and optical design for CHAMP.