The Optical Design of CHARIS: An Exoplanet IFS for the Subaru Telescope

Abstract

High-contrast imaging techniques now make possible both imaging and spectroscopy of planets around nearby stars. We present the optical design for the Coronagraphic High Angular Resolution Imaging Spectrograph (CHARIS), a lenslet-based, cryogenic integral field spectrograph (IFS) for imaging exoplanets on the Subaru telescope. The IFS will provide spectral information for 138x138 spatial elements over a 2.07 arcsec x 2.07 arcsec field of view (FOV). CHARIS will operate in the near infrared (lambda = 1.15 - 2.5 microns) and will feature two spectral resolution modes of R = 18 (low-res mode) and R = 73 (high-res mode). Taking advantage of the Subaru telescope adaptive optics systems and coronagraphs (AO188 and SCExAO), CHARIS will provide sufficient contrast to obtain spectra of young self-luminous Jupiter-mass exoplanets. CHARIS will undergo CDR in October 2013 and is projected to have first light by the end of 2015. We report here on the current optical design of CHARIS and its unique innovations.

15 pages

References in corpus (3)

• Direct Imaging of Multiple Planets Orbiting the Star HR 8799
• Direct Imaging of a Cold Jovian Exoplanet in Orbit around the Sun-like Star GJ 504
• Can Ground-based Telescopes Detect The Oxygen 1.27 Micron Absorption Feature as a Biomarker in Exoplanets ?

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Performance of the VLT Planet Finder SPHERE II. Data analysis and Results for IFS in laboratory
• Performance of the VLT Planet Finder SPHERE I. Photometry and astrometry precision with IRDIS and IFS in laboratory
• The Measurement, Treatment, and Impact of Spectral Covariance and Bayesian Priors in Integral-Field Spectroscopy of Exoplanets
• The Planetary Accretion Shock: I. Framework for Radiation-hydrodynamical Simulations and First Results
• Patterned liquid-crystal optics for broadband coronagraphy and wavefront sensing
• Fully broadband vAPP coronagraphs enabling polarimetric high contrast imaging
• Status of the MEDUSAE post-processing method to detect circumstellar objects in high-contrast multispectral images