A New High Contrast Imaging Program at Palomar Observatory

By S. Hinkley, B. Oppenheimer, N. Zimmerman, D. Brenner, I. Parry, J. Crepp, G. Vasisht, E. Ligon, D. King, Remi Soummer and 12 more. 2010

156 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We describe a new instrument that forms the core of a long-term high contrast imaging program at the 200 inch (5 m) Hale Telescope at Palomar Observatory. The primary scientific thrust is to obtain images and low-resolution spectroscopy of brown dwarfs and young exoplanets of several Jupiter masses in the vicinity of stars within 50 pc of the Sun. The instrument is a microlens-based integral field spectrograph integrated with a diffraction-limited, apodized-pupil Lyot coronagraph. The entire combination is mounted behind the Palomar adaptive optics (AO) system. The spectrograph obtains imaging in 23 channels across the J and H bands (1.06–1.78 μm). The image plane of our spectrograph is subdivided by a 200 × 200 element microlens array with a plate scale of 19.2 mas per microlens, critically sampling the diffraction-limited point-spread function at 1.06 μm. In addition to obtaining spectra, this wavelength resolution allows suppression of the chromatically dependent speckle noise, which we describe. In addition, we have recently installed a novel internal wave front calibration system that will provide continuous updates to the AO system every 0.5–1.0 minutes by sensing the wave front within the coronagraph. The Palomar AO system is undergoing an upgrade to a much higher order AO system (PALM-3000): a 3388-actuator tweeter deformable mirror working together with the existing 241-actuator mirror. This system, the highest-resolution AO corrector of its kind, will allow correction with subapertures as small as 8.1 cm at the telescope pupil using natural guide stars. The coronagraph alone has achieved an initial dynamic range in the H band of 2 × 10-4 at 1″, without speckle noise suppression. We demonstrate that spectral speckle suppression provides a factor of 10–20 improvement over this, bringing our current contrast at 1″ to ∼2 × 10-5. This system is the first of a new generation of apodized-pupil coronagraphs combined with high-order adaptive optics and integral field spectrographs (e.g., GPI, SPHERE, HiCIAO), and we anticipate that this instrument will make a lasting contribution to high-contrast imaging in the Northern Hemisphere for years.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/836b2db8a8c92d396b55887f5b24b2000d643612

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. B. Bowler
2. N. Madhusudhan
3. D. Spiegel
4. D. Weinberg
5. Adam Burrows
6. C. Hirata
7. P. Hopkins
8. L. Hernquist

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

1. B. Bowler
2. Olivier Guyon
3. Remi Soummer
4. L. Pueyo
5. J. Larkin
6. N. Jeremy Kasdin
7. D. Spiegel
8. Wesley A. Traub

In Instrumentation

1. B. Bowler
2. N. Madhusudhan
3. Adam Burrows
4. D. Spiegel
5. Olivier Guyon
6. Remi Soummer
7. Y. Mellier
8. B. Gaudi

Citations in the corpus

• DETECTION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF EXOPLANETS AND DISKS USING PROJECTIONS ON KARHUNEN–LOÈVE EIGENIMAGES (2012, background): “Direct imaging results will significantly expand in the near future with a new generation ground-based instruments being implemented (Macintosh et al. 2008; Beuzit et al. 2008; Hinkley et al. 2011; Hodapp et al. 2008).”
• SPHERE: the exoplanet imager for the Very Large Telescope (2019, methodology): “…2004; Sivaramakrishnan et al. 2007), the TRIDENT camera tested at the CFHT (Marois et al. 2005), Project P1640 for Palomar (Oppenheimer et al. 2012; Hinkley et al. 2008, 2011), the LBT first-light AO system (Esposito et al. 2003), the Keck AO system (Wizinowich et al. 2000; van Dam et al. 2004)…”
• Imaging Extrasolar Giant Planets (2016, background): “…instrument itself contains an apodized-pupil Lyot coronagraph and integral field unit that samples 32 spectral channels across Y , J , and H bands (Hinkley et al. 2011), producing a low-resolution spectrum to broadly characterize the physical properties of faint companions (Roberts et al. 2012;…”
• MODEL ATMOSPHERES FOR MASSIVE GAS GIANTS WITH THICK CLOUDS: APPLICATION TO THE HR 8799 PLANETS AND PREDICTIONS FOR FUTURE DETECTIONS (2011, background): “Major efforts are currently underway targeting progressively higher contrast levels, e.g., GPI (Macintosh et al. 2006), SPHERE (Beuzit et al. 2008), Project 1640 (Hinkley et al. 2008,2011), SEEDS (Tamura 2009), and NICI (Liu et al. 2010).”
• SPECTRAL AND PHOTOMETRIC DIAGNOSTICS OF GIANT PLANET FORMATION SCENARIOS (2011, background): “…the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch instrument on the Very Large Telescope (SPHERE; Beuzit et al. 2008), the Strategic Exploration of Exoplanets and Disks experiment on Subaru (SEEDS; Tamura 2009; Janson et al. 2011b), and Project 1640 on Palomar (Hinkley et al. 2008, 2011).”
• Wide-Field InfrarRed Survey Telescope-Astrophysics Focused Telescope Assets WFIRST-AFTA 2015 Report (2015, methodology): “Exoplanet imaging surveys combining AO, coronagraphy, and integral field spectroscopy are underway at Palomar Observatory, Gemini Observatory, and the ESO Very Large Telescope; soon another will begin at Subaru Telescope (Hinkley et al. 2011, Macintosh et al. 2014, Langlois et al. 2014, Groff et al.”
• ORBITAL MOTION OF HR 8799 b, c, d USING HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE DATA FROM 1998: CONSTRAINTS ON INCLINATION, ECCENTRICITY, AND STABILITY (2011, background): “…et al. 2007a; Kasper et al. 2007; Nielsen et al. 2008; Leconte et al. 2010; Ehrenreich et al. 2010), and direct imaging will expand in the near future with new facility instruments on large ground-based telescopes (Macintosh et al. 2008; Beuzit et al. 2008; Hodapp et al. 2008; Hinkley et al. 2011).”