Klio: A 5 micron camera for the detection of giant exoplanets

Abstract

We plan to take advantage of the unprecedented combination of low thermal background and high resolution provided by the 6.5m MMT's adaptive secondary mirror, to target the 3-5 micron atmospheric window where giant planets are expected to be anomalously bright. We are in the process of building a 3-5 micron coronograph that is predicted to be sensitive to planets as close as 0.4 arcsec to the parent star. We expect to be able to detect giant planets down to 5 times Jupiter's mass for a 1 Gyr old system at 10 pc. We plan to carry out a survey which is complementary to the radial velocity detections of planets and constructed to characterize the prevalence and distribution of giant planets around nearby, Sun-like stars.

arXiv comment4 pages, 2 figures, to appear in the AIP Conf Proc: "The Search for Other Worlds", eds. S. S. Holt & D. Deming

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