Publications (57)
Dynamical Analysis of the HD 169142 Planet-Forming Disk: Twelve Years of High-Contrast Polarimetry
Miles Lucas, Michael Bottom, Ruobing Dong +19
We present a dynamical analysis of the HD 169142 planet-forming disk based on high-contrast polarimetric imaging over a twelve-year observational period, offering insights into its…
Direct detection and characterization of exoplanets using imaging Fourier transform spectroscopy
Jingwen Zhang, Michael Bottom, Eugene Serabyn
Space-based direct imaging provides prospects for detection and spectral characterization of exoplanets at optical and near-infrared wavelengths. Integral field spectrographs (IFS)…
Deep exploration of Eridani with Keck Ms-band vortex coronagraphy and radial velocities: mass and orbital parameters of the giant exoplanet
Dimitri Mawet, Lea Hirsch, Eve J. Lee +27
We present the most sensitive direct imaging and radial velocity (RV) exploration of Eridani to date. Eridani is an adolescent planetary system, reminiscent of the early…
He'e-Lab: A modular testbed for astrophotonics and wavefront sensing development
Sebastien Vievard, Christopher Hamner, Nour Skaf +14
Advanced astronomical instrumentation requires accessible, reconfigurable platforms to validate novel technologies and algorithms before on-sky deployment. We present the design, a…
Optimizing Doppler Surveys for Planet Yield
Michael Bottom, Philip S. Muirhead, John Asher Johnson +1
One of the most promising methods of discovering nearby, low-mass planets in the habitable zones of stars is the precision radial velocity technique. However, there are many challe…
Using High-Resolution Optical Spectra to Measure Intrinsic Properties of Low-Mass Stars: New Properties for KOI-314 and GJ 3470
J. Sebastian Pineda, Michael Bottom, John A. Johnson
We construct high signal-to-noise "template" spectra by co-adding hundreds of spectra of nearby dwarfs spanning K7 to M4, taken with Keck/HIRES as part of the California Planet Sea…
Discovery of a Jupiter Analog Misaligned to the Inner Planetary System in HD 73344
Jingwen Zhang, Lauren M. Weiss, Daniel Huber +6
We present the discovery of a Jupiter-like planet, HD 73344 d (, AU, ) based on…
SCExAO, a testbed for developing high-contrast imaging technologies for ELTs
Kyohoon Ahn, Olivier Guyon, Julien Lozi +21
To directly detect exoplanets and protoplanetary disks, the development of high accuracy wavefront sensing and control (WFS&C) technologies is essential, especially for ground-base…
Characterizing the Cool KOIs III. KOI-961: A Small Star with Large Proper Motion and Three Small Planets
Philip S. Muirhead, John Asher Johnson, Kevin Apps +21
We present the characterization of the star KOI 961, an M dwarf with transit signals indicative of three short-period exoplanets, originally discovered by the Kepler Mission. We pr…
"Fast" and Furious focal-plane wavefront sensing at W. M. Keck Observatory
Steven P. Bos, Michael Bottom, Sam Ragland +3
High quality, repeatable point-spread functions are important for science cases like direct exoplanet imaging, high-precision astrometry, and high-resolution spectroscopy of exopla…
PIRATES -- a machine-learning framework for polarized, interferometric image reconstruction
Lucinda Lilley, Barnaby Norris, Peter Tuthill +13
Optical interferometric image reconstruction is a challenging, ill-posed optimization problem which usually relies on heavy regularization for convergence. Conventional algorithms…
Fundamental Noise Limits of Infrared Detectors in the Presence of Readout Glow
Michael Bottom, Gustav Pettersson, Pavaman Bilgi +5
Read noise in infrared sensor arrays remains a major obstacle for ground- and space-based astronomy. It has long been recognized that the upcoming extremely large telescopes cannot…
A Bayesian Framework for Exoplanet Direct Detection and Non-Detection
Jean-Baptiste Ruffio, Dimitri Mawet, Ian Czekala +9
Rigorously quantifying the information in high contrast imaging data is important for informing follow-up strategies to confirm the substellar nature of a point source, constrainin…
Noise-weighted angular differential imaging
Michael Bottom, Garreth Ruane, Dimitri Mawet
Angular differential imaging (ADI) (Marois et al. 2006) is an observational technique in high contrast imaging where the telescope is used in pupil tracking mode so that the image…
High-contrast imaging of tight resolved binaries with two vector vortex coronagraphs in cascade with the Palomar SDC instrument
Jonas Kuhn, Sebastian Daemgen, Ji Wang +6
More than half of the stars in the solar neighborhood reside in binary/multiple stellar systems, and recent studies suggest that gas giant planets may be more abundant around binar…
Discovery and Early Multi-Wavelength Measurements of the Energetic Type Ic Supernova PTF12gzk: A Massive-Star Explosion in a Dwarf Host Galaxy
Sagi Ben-Ami, Avishay Gal-Yam, Alexei V. Filippenko +45
We present the discovery and extensive early-time observations of the Type Ic supernova (SN) PTF12gzk. Our finely sampled light curves show a rise of 0.8mag within 2.5hr. Power-law…
A Visible-light Lyot Coronagraph for SCExAO/VAMPIRES
Miles Lucas, Michael Bottom, Olivier Guyon +7
We describe the design and initial results from a visible-light Lyot coronagraph for SCExAO/VAMPIRES. The coronagraph is comprised of four hard-edged, partially transmissive focal…
Attaining Doppler Precision of 10 cm/s with a Lock-In Amplified Spectrometer
Rebecca Jensen-Clem, Philip S. Muirhead, Michael Bottom +3
We explore the radial velocity performance benefits of coupling starlight to a fast-scanning interferometer and a fast-readout spectrometer with zero readout noise. By rapidly scan…
Glow reduction of ultra-low noise LmAPDs: towards photon counting infrared arrays
Guillaume Huber, Michael Bottom, Charles-Antoine Claveau +5
Spectroscopy and direct-imaging of ultra-faint targets such as Earth-like exoplanets and high redshift galaxies are among the primary goals of upcoming large scale astronomy projec…
Stellar Coronagraphy
Eugene Serabyn, Michael Bottom
Detecting exoplanets and other faint sources of emitted and reflected light near a bright star requires deeply suppressing the starlight while efficiently transmitting the dim ligh…
Starshade formation flying I: optical sensing
Michael Bottom, Stefan Martin, Eric Cady +6
A key challenge for starshades is formation flying. To successfully image exoplanets, the telescope boresight and starshade must be aligned to ~1 m at separations of tens of thousa…
Precision near-infrared radial velocity instrumentation II: Non-Circular Core Fiber Scrambler
Peter P. Plavchan, Michael Bottom, Peter Gao +18
We have built and commissioned a prototype agitated non-circular core fiber scrambler for precision spectroscopic radial velocity measurements in the near-infrared H band. We have…
Retrieval of Precise Radial Velocities from Near-Infrared High Resolution Spectra of Low Mass Stars
Peter Gao, Peter Plavchan, Jonathan Gagné +21
Given that low-mass stars have intrinsically low luminosities at optical wavelengths and a propensity for stellar activity, it is advantageous for radial velocity (RV) surveys of t…
Characterization of the inner disk around HD 141569 A from Keck/NIRC2 L-band vortex coronagraphy
Dimitri Mawet, Ãlodie Choquet, Olivier Absil +22
HD 141569 A is a pre-main sequence B9.5 Ve star surrounded by a prominent and complex circumstellar disk, likely still in a transition stage from protoplanetary to debris disk phas…
Jitter Characterization of the HyTI Satellite
Chase Urasaki, Frances Zhu, Michael Bottom +2
The Hyperspectral Thermal Imager (HyTI) is a technology demonstration mission that will obtain high spatial, spectral, and temporal resolution long-wave infrared images of Earth's…
Smartphone scene generator for efficient characterization of visible imaging detectors
Michael Bottom, Leo S. Neat, Leon K. Harding +3
Full characterization of imaging detectors involves subjecting them to spatially and temporally varying illumination patterns over a large dynamic range. Here we present a scene ge…
The W. M. Keck Observatory infrared vortex coronagraph and a first image of HIP79124 B
Eugene Serabyn, Elsa Huby, Keith Matthews +22
An optical vortex coronagraph has been implemented within the NIRC2 camera on the Keck II telescope and used to carry out on-sky tests and observations. The development of this new…
: Planet or Noise?
Jacob Golomb, Graça Rocha, Tiffany Meshkat +5
The work presented here attempts at answering the question: how do we decide when a given adetection is a planet or just residual noise in exoplanet direct imaging data? To this en…
Stellar Double Coronagraph: a multistage coronagraphic platform at Palomar observatory
Michael Bottom, J. Chris Shelton, James K. Wallace +6
We present a new instrument, the "Stellar Double Coronagraph" (SDC), a flexible coronagraphic platform. Designed for Palomar Observatory's 200" Hale telescope, its two focal and pu…
Review of high-contrast imaging systems for current and future ground-based and space-based telescopes II. Common path wavefront sensing/control and Coherent Differential Imaging
Nemanja Jovanovic, Olivier Absil, Pierre Baudoz +28
The Optimal Optical Coronagraph (OOC) Workshop held at the Lorentz Center in September 2017 in Leiden, the Netherlands, gathered a diverse group of 25 researchers working on exopla…
Speckle suppression and companion detection using coherent differential imaging
Michael Bottom, J. Kent Wallace, Randall D. Bartos +2
Residual speckles due to aberrations arising from optical errors after the split between the wavefront sensor and the science camera path are the most significant barriers to imagi…
Smartphone screens as astrometric calibrators
Aidan Walk, Charles-Antoine Claveau, Michael Bottom +4
Geometric optical distortion is a significant contributor to the astrometric error budget in large telescopes using adaptive optics. To increase astrometric precision, optical dist…
Constraining the Orbit and Mass of epsilon Eridani b with Radial Velocities, Hipparcos IAD-Gaia DR2 Astrometry, and Multi-epoch Vortex Coronagraphy Upper Limits
Jorge Llop-Sayson, Jason J. Wang, Jean-Baptiste Ruffio +30
~Eridani is a young planetary system hosting a complex multi-belt debris disk and a confirmed Jupiter-like planet orbiting at 3.48 AU from its host star. Its age and architectu…
Near-Infrared Imaging of a Spiral in the CQ Tau Disk
Taichi Uyama, Takayuki Muto, Dimitri Mawet +28
We present -band Keck/NIRC2 imaging and -band Subaru/AO188+HiCIAO polarimetric observations of CQ Tau disk with a new spiral arm. Apart from the spiral feature our obs…
Minerva-Australis I: Design, Commissioning, & First Photometric Results
Brett Addison, Duncan J. Wright, Robert A. Wittenmyer +35
The Minerva-Australis telescope array is a facility dedicated to the follow-up, confirmation, characterisation, and mass measurement of bright transiting planets discovered by the…
A High-Precision NIR Survey for RV Variable Low-Mass Stars
Jonathan Gagné, Peter Plavchan, Peter Gao +26
We present the results of a precise near-infrared (NIR) radial velocity (RV) survey of 32 low-mass stars with spectral types K2-M4 using CSHELL at the NASA IRTF in the -band wit…
Precise Near-Infrared Radial Velocities
Peter Plavchan, Peter Gao, Jonathan Gagne +31
We present the results of two 2.3 micron near-infrared radial velocity surveys to detect exoplanets around 36 nearby and young M dwarfs. We use the CSHELL spectrograph (R ~46,000)…
Miniature Exoplanet Radial Velocity Array (MINERVA) I. Design, Commissioning, and First Science Results
Jonathan J. Swift, Michael Bottom, John A. Johnson +26
The MINiature Exoplanet Radial Velocity Array (MINERVA) is a US-based observational facility dedicated to the discovery and characterization of exoplanets around a nearby sample of…
Sequential coronagraphic low-order wavefront control
Michael Bottom, Samuel A. U. Walker, Ian Cunnyngham +2
Coronagraphs are highly sensitive to wavefront errors, with performance degrading rapidly in the presence of low-order aberrations. Correcting these aberrations at the coronagraphi…
KELT-11b: A Highly Inflated Sub-Saturn Exoplanet Transiting the V=8 Subgiant HD 93396
Joshua Pepper, Joseph E. Rodriguez, Karen A. Collins +34
We report the discovery of a transiting exoplanet, KELT-11b, orbiting the bright () subgiant HD 93396. A global analysis of the system shows that the host star is an evolved…
A Survey of Protoplanetary Disks Using the Keck/NIRC2 Vortex Coronagraph
Nicole L. Wallack, Jean-Baptiste Ruffio, Garreth Ruane +34
Recent Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observations of protoplanetary disks in the millimeter continuum have shown a variety of radial gaps, cavities, and spira…
Dynamical Architectures of S-type Transiting Planets in Binaries II: A Dichotomy in Orbital Alignment of Small Planets in Close Binary Systems
Jingwen Zhang, Daniel Huber, Michael Bottom +35
Stellar multiplicity plays a crucial role in shaping planet formation and dynamical evolution. We present a survey of 54 TESS Objects of Interest (TOIs) within 300 pc that exhibit…
The QACITS pointing sensor: from theory to on-sky operation on Keck/NIRC2
Elsa Huby, Olivier Absil, Dimitri Mawet +5
Small inner working angle coronagraphs are essential to benefit from the full potential of large and future extremely large ground-based telescopes, especially in the context of th…
First tests of a 1 megapixel near-infrared avalanche photodiode array for ultra-low background space astronomy
Charles-Antoine Claveau, Michael Bottom, Shane Jacobson +10
Spectroscopy of Earth-like exoplanets and ultra-faint galaxies are priority science cases for the coming decades. Here, broadband source flux rates are measured in photons per squa…
Discovery of a low-mass companion around HR3549
Dimitri Mawet, Trevor David, Michael Bottom +7
We report the discovery of a low-mass companion to HR3549, an A0V star surrounded by a debris disk with a warm excess detected by WISE at 22 m ( significance). We imaged…
DARKNESS: A Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detector Integral Field Spectrograph for High-Contrast Astronomy
Seth R. Meeker, Benjamin A. Mazin, Alex B. Walter +21
We present DARKNESS (the DARK-speckle Near-infrared Energy-resolving Superconducting Spectrophotometer), the first of several planned integral field spectrographs to use optical/ne…
First radial velocity results from the MINiature Exoplanet Radial Velocity Array (MINERVA)
Maurice L. Wilson, Jason D. Eastman, Matthew A. Cornachione +52
The MINiature Exoplanet Radial Velocity Array (MINERVA) is a dedicated observatory of four 0.7m robotic telescopes fiber-fed to a KiwiSpec spectrograph. The MINERVA mission is to d…
An Imaging Search for Post-Main-Sequence Planets of Sirius B
Miles Lucas, Michael Bottom, Garreth Ruane +1
We present deep imaging of Sirius B, the closest and brightest white dwarf, to constrain post-main-sequence planetary evolution in the Sirius system. We use Keck/NIRC2 in L'-band (…
Precision near-infrared radial velocity instrumentation I: Absorption Gas Cells
Peter P. Plavchan, Guillem Anglada-Escude, Russel White +18
We have built and commissioned gas absorption cells for precision spectroscopic radial velocity measurements in the near-infrared in the H and K bands. We describe the construction…
Visible-Light High-Contrast Imaging and Polarimetry with SCExAO/VAMPIRES
Miles Lucas, Barnaby Norris, Olivier Guyon +17
We present significant upgrades to the VAMPIRES instrument, a visible-light (600 nm to 800 nm) high-contrast imaging polarimeter integrated within SCExAO on the Subaru telescope. K…
Characterizing the Cool KOIs. V. KOI-256: A Mutually Eclipsing Post-Common Envelope Binary
Philip S. Muirhead, Andrew Vanderburg, Avi Shporer +23
We report that Kepler Object of Interest 256 (KOI-256) is a mutually eclipsing post-common envelope binary (ePCEB), consisting of a cool white dwarf (M = 0.592 +/- 0.089 MSun, R =…
On-sky performance of the QACITS pointing control technique with the Keck/NIRC2 vortex coronagraph
Elsa Huby, Michael Bottom, Bruno Femenia +4
A vortex coronagraph is now available for high contrast observations with the Keck/NIRC2 instrument at L band. Reaching the optimal performance of the coronagraph requires fine con…
High contrast imaging at the photon noise limit with self-calibrating WFS/C systems
Olivier Guyon, Barnaby Norris, Marc-Antoine Martinod +20
High contrast imaging (HCI) systems rely on active wavefront control (WFC) to deliver deep raw contrast in the focal plane, and on calibration techniques to further enhance contras…
Resolving the delta Andromedae spectroscopic binary with direct imaging
Michael Bottom, Jonas Kuhn, Bertrand Mennesson +4
We present a direct image of the innermost companion to the red giant delta Andromedae using the Stellar Double Coronagraph at the Palomar Observatory. We use a Markov chain Monte…
Lessons for WFIRST CGI from ground-based high-contrast systems
Vanessa P. Bailey, Michael Bottom, Eric Cady +26
The Coronagraph Instrument (CGI) for NASA's Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) will constitute a dramatic step forward for high-contrast imaging, integral field spectros…
Progress towards a megapixel linear-mode avalanche photodiode array for ultra-low background shortwave infrared astronomy
Charles-Antoine Claveau, Michael Bottom, Shane Jacobson +12
Spectroscopy of Earth-like exoplanets and ultra-faint galaxies are priority science cases for the coming decades. Here, broadband source flux rates are measured in photons per squa…
Enabling the next generation of scientific discoveries by embracing photonic technologies
Nemanja Jovanovic, Charles Beichman, Cullen Blake +46
The fields of Astronomy and Astrophysics are technology limited, where the advent and application of new technologies to astronomy usher in a flood of discoveries altering our unde…