A New High Contrast Imaging Program at Palomar Observatory

Abstract

We describe a new instrument that forms the core of a long-term high contrast imaging program at the 200-inch Hale Telescope at Palomar Observatory. The primary scientific thrust is to obtain images and low-resolution spectroscopy of brown dwarfs and young Jovian mass exoplanets in the vicinity of stars within 50 parsecs of the Sun. The instrument is a microlens-based integral field spectrograph integrated with a diffraction limited, apodized-pupil Lyot coronagraph, mounted behind the Palomar adaptive optics system. The spectrograph obtains imaging in 23 channels across the J and H bands (1.06 - 1.78 microns). In addition to obtaining spectra, this wavelength resolution allows suppression of the chromatically dependent speckle noise, which we describe. 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 will allow correction with subapertures as small as 8cm at the telescope pupil using natural guide stars. The coronagraph alone has achieved an initial dynamic range in the H-band of 2 X 10^-4 at 1 arcsecond, without speckle noise suppression. We demonstrate that spectral speckle suppression is providing a factor of 10-20 improvement over this bringing our current contrast at an arcsecond to ~2 X 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 this instrument will make a lasting contribution to high contrast imaging in the Northern Hemisphere for years.

Accepted to PASP: 12 pages, 12 figures

Cited by in corpus (94)

• Detection and Characterization of Exoplanets and Disks using Projections on Karhunen-Loeve Eigenimages
• SPHERE: the exoplanet imager for the Very Large Telescope
• Spectral and Photometric Diagnostics of Giant Planet Formation Scenarios
• Imaging Extrasolar Giant Planets
• PALM-3000: Exoplanet Adaptive Optics for the 5-meter Hale Telescope
• First light of the VLT planet finder SPHERE. III. New spectrophotometry and astrometry of the HR8799 exoplanetary system
• Model atmospheres for massive gas giants with thick clouds: Application to the HR 8799 planets and predictions for future detections
• Detection and Characterization of Exoplanets using Projections on Karhunen-Loeve Eigenimages: Forward Modeling
• Constraining the initial entropy of directly-detected exoplanets
• Calibration of quasi-static aberrations in exoplanet direct-imaging instruments with a Zernike phase-mask sensor
• Retired A Stars and Their Companions: Eighteen New Jovian Planets
• The Ages of Early-Type Stars: Strömgren Photometric Methods Calibrated, Validated, Tested, and Applied to Hosts and Prospective Hosts of Directly Imaged Exoplanets
• Reconnaissance of the HR 8799 Exosolar System I: Near IR Spectroscopy
• High Performance Lyot and PIAA Coronagraphy for Arbitrarily shaped Telescope Apertures
• Characterization of exoplanets from their formation III: The statistics of planetary luminosities
• Reconnaissance of the HR 8799 Exosolar System II: Astrometry and Orbital Motion
• The Dynamical Mass and Three-Dimensional Orbit of HR7672B: A Benchmark Brown Dwarf with High Eccentricity
• Gemini Planet Imager Spectroscopy of the HR 8799 planets c and d
• Planets Around Low-Mass Stars (PALMS). I. A Substellar Companion to the Young M Dwarf 1RXS J235133.3+312720
• Application of a damped Locally Optimized Combination of Images method to the spectral characterization of faint companions using an Integral Field Spectrograph
• High Contrast Imaging with an Arbitrary Aperture: Active Correction of Aperture Discontinuities
• A 5 Micron Image of beta Pictoris b at a Sub-Jupiter Projected Separation: Evidence for a Misalignment Between the Planet and the Inner, Warped Disk
• DARKNESS: A Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detector Integral Field Spectrograph for High-Contrast Astronomy
• Observational Constraints on Companions inside of 10 AU in the HR 8799 Planetary System
• Calibration of quasi-static aberrations in exoplanet direct-imaging instruments with a Zernike phase-mask sensor. II. Concept validation with ZELDA on VLT/SPHERE
• Reference star differential imaging of close-in companions and circumstellar disks with the NIRC2 vortex coronagraph at W.M. Keck Observatory
• Apodized pupil Lyot coronagraphs for arbitrary apertures. V. Hybrid Shaped Pupil designs for imaging Earth-like planets with future space observatories
• The Kappa Andromedae System: New Constraints on the Companion Mass, System Age & Further Multiplicity
• The TRENDS High-Contrast Imaging Survey. I. Three Benchmark M-dwarfs Orbiting Solar-type Stars
• The Measurement, Treatment, and Impact of Spectral Covariance and Bayesian Priors in Integral-Field Spectroscopy of Exoplanets
• Five Debris Disks Newly Revealed in Scattered Light from the HST NICMOS Archive
• Characterizing the performance of the NIRC2 vortex coronagraph at W.M. Keck Observatory
• The TRENDS High-Contrast Imaging Survey. V. Discovery of an Old and Cold Benchmark T-dwarf Orbiting the Nearby G-star HD 19467
• The LEECH Exoplanet Imaging Survey. Further constraints on the planet architecture of the HR 8799 system
• Apodized Pupil Lyot Coronagraphs for Arbitrary Apertures. IV. Reduced Inner Working Angle and Increased Robustness to Low-Order Aberrations
• Speckle Suppression with the Project 1640 Integral Field Spectrograph
• Estimates of the Planet Yield from Ground-Based High-Contrast Imaging Observations as a Function of Stellar Mass
• The JWST Early Release Science Program for the Direct Imaging & Spectroscopy of Exoplanetary Systems
• Artificial incoherent speckles enable precision astrometry and photometry in high-contrast imaging
• The Water Abundance of the Directly Imaged Substellar Companion κ And b Retrieved from a Near Infrared Spectrum
• The TRENDS High-Contrast Imaging Survey. III. A Faint White Dwarf Companion Orbiting HD 114174
• Speckle temporal stability in XAO coronagraphic images II. Refine model for quasi-static speckle temporal evolution for VLT/SPHERE
• A Data Cube Extraction Pipeline for a Coronagraphic Integral Field Spectrograph
• Can Ground-based Telescopes Detect The Oxygen 1.27 Micron Absorption Feature as a Biomarker in Exoplanets ?
• Speckle Temporal Stability in eXtreme Adaptive Optics Coronagraphic Images
• ISPY -- NACO Imaging Survey for Planets around Young stars: Survey description and results from the first 2.5 years of observations
• A Demonstration of Wavefront Sensing and Mirror Phasing from the Image Domain
• Point Source Polarimetry with the Gemini Planet Imager: Sensitivity Characterization with T5.5 Dwarf Companion HD 19467 B
• Searching for young Jupiter analogs around AP Col: L-band high-contrast imaging of the closest pre-main sequence star
• Direct Spectrum of the Benchmark T dwarf HD 19467 B
• Focal plane wavefront sensor achromatization : The multireference self-coherent camera
• Apodized phase mask coronagraphs for arbitrary apertures
• GPI Spectroscopy of the Mass, Age, and Metallicity Benchmark Brown Dwarf HD 4747 B
• Early Results from VLT-SPHERE: Long-Slit Spectroscopy of 2MASS 0122-2439B, a Young Companion Near the Deuterium Burning Limit
• Improved achromatization of phase mask coronagraphs using colored apodization
• Constraining mass ratio and extinction in the FU Orionis binary system with infrared integral field spectroscopy
• Neptune long-lived atmospheric features in 2013-2015 from small (28-cm) to large (10-m) telescopes
• Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer Adaptive Optics: On-sky performance and lessons learned
• The LEECH Exoplanet Imaging Survey: Orbit and Component Masses of the Intermediate Age, Late-Type Binary NO UMa
• S4: A Spatial-Spectral model for Speckle Suppression
• Polynomial Apodizers for Centrally Obscured Vortex Coronagraphs
• High Resolution Infrared Imaging & Spectroscopy of the Z Canis Majoris System During Quiescence & Outburst
• The TRENDS High-Contrast Imaging Survey. II. Direct Detection of the HD 8375 Tertiary
• Laboratory validation of the dual-zone phase mask coronagraph in broadband light at the high-contrast imaging THD-testbed
• Review of high-contrast imaging systems for current and future ground- and space-based telescopes I. Coronagraph design methods and optical performance metrics
• Imaged sub-stellar companions: not as eccentric as they appear? The effect of an unseen inner mass on derived orbits
• High contrast imaging at the LBT: the LEECH exoplanet imaging survey
• Apodization in high-contrast long-slit spectroscopy. II. Concept validation and first on-sky results with VLT/SPHERE
• Atmospheric characterization of cold exoplanets using a 1.5-m coronagraphic space telescope
• Simultaneous exoplanet detection and instrument aberration retrieval in multispectral coronagraphic imaging
• Active correction of aperture discontinuities (ACAD) for space telescope pupils: a parametic analysis
• The Demographics of Wide-Separation Planets
• Simulation of planet detection with the SPHERE IFS
• Project 1640 Observations of Brown Dwarf GJ 758 B: Near-Infrared Spectrum and Atmospheric Modeling
• A New Method for Characterizing Very-Low-Mass Companions with Low Resolution Near-Infrared Spectroscopy
• Characterization of the Companion to $\mu$ Her
• A deep search for planets in the inner 15 au around Vega
• Project 1640 Observations of the White Dwarf HD 114174 B
• Low-order wavefront control using a Zernike sensor through Lyot coronagraphs for exoplanet imaging: II. Concurrent operation with stroke minimization
• High Spatial Resolution Thermal-Infrared Spectroscopy with ALES: Resolved Spectra of the Benchmark Brown Dwarf Binary HD 130948BC
• InnoPOL: an EMCCD imaging polarimeter and 85-element curvature AO system on the 3.6-m AEOS telescope for cost effective polarimetric speckle suppression
• Development of an ELT XAO testbed using a Mach-Zehnder wavefront sensor: calibration of the deformable mirror
• Laboratory comparison of coronagraphic concepts under dynamical seeing and high-order adaptive optics correction
• Utilizing a Database of Simulated Geometric Albedo Spectra for Photometric Characterization of Rocky Exoplanet Atmospheres
• PULSE: The Palomar Ultraviolet Laser for the Study of Exoplanets
• High-contrast imager for Complex Aperture Telescopes (HiCAT): 2. Design overview and first light results
• Apodized Pupil Lyot Coronagraphs with arbitrary aperture telescopes: novel designs using hybrid focal plane masks
• LEECH: A 100 Night Exoplanet Imaging Survey at the LBT
• Companions of Stars: From Other Stars to Brown Dwarfs to Planets: The Discovery of the First Methane Brown Dwarf
• Know the Star, Know the Planet. V. Characterization of the Stellar Companion to the Exoplanet Host HD 177830
• Joint Analysis of Multicolor Photometry: A New Approach to Constrain the Nature of Multiple-Star Systems Hosting Exoplanet Candidates
• Low-order wavefront control using a Zernike sensor through Lyot coronagraphs for exoplanet imaging
• Adaptive Optics Observations of Exoplanets, Brown Dwarfs, & Binary Stars
• Correcting for the effects of pupil discontinuities with the ACAD method