Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2003
The formalism for the prolate apodized coronagraphs is shortly outlined. A presentation of the numericalcomputation of the circular prolate apodization is given, and a comparison is made between the exact prolateand the solution obtained by Guyon &Roddier (2000), with an iterative algorithm. The agreement is excellentbetween the two solutions, provided a sufficient sampling of the mask. Numerical simulations are presented for circular apertures with prolate apodizations and compared to theclassical unapodized technique: off-axis response, effect of mask size, central obscuration and chromatism.