Lessons learned from the NEAR experiment and prospects for the upcoming mid-IR HCI instruments
arXiv:2302.12101 · doi:10.1117/12.2630040
Abstract
The mid-infrared (IR) regime is well suited to directly detect the thermal signatures of exoplanets in our solar neighborhood. The NEAR experiment: demonstration of high-contrast imaging (HCI) capability at ten microns, can reach sub-mJy detection sensitivity in a few hours of observation time, which is sufficient to detect a few Jupiter mass planets in nearby systems. One of the big limitations for HCI in the mid-IR is thermal sky-background. In this work, we show that precipitate water vapor (PWV) is the principal contributor to thermal sky background and science PSF quality. In the presence of high PWV, the HCI performance is significantly degraded in the background limited regime.
8 pages, 4 figures, conference proceedings (SPIE Astronomical telescopes and instrumentation 2022)
References in corpus (4)
- VIP: Vortex Image Processing package for high-contrast direct imaging
- High contrast imaging at 10 microns, a search for exoplanets around: Eps Indi A, Eps Eri, Tau Ceti, Sirius A and Sirius B
- Design, pointing control, and on-sky performance of the mid-infrared vortex coronagraph for the VLT/NEAR experiment
- High accuracy short-term PWV operational forecast at the VLT and perspectives for sky background forecast