New Solar System Researches expected by a New Telescope Project at Mt. Haleakala, Hawaii

Details New Solar System Researches expected by a New Telescope Project at Mt. Haleakala, Hawaii New Solar System Researches expected by a New Telescope Project at Mt. Haleakala, Hawaii

Sep 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009dps....41.4509k&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #41, #45.09

Physics

Optics

Scientific paper

We Tohoku University starts the project for the new ground-based telescope dedicated to planets and exoplanets, in collaboration with the Institute for Astronomy of University of Hawaii(IfA/UH) and ETH Zurich.
The summit of Mt. Haleakala in Maui, Hawaii is one of the best sites with clear skies, good seeing, and low humidity conditions as well as good accessibility despite its high altitude (elv. 3,000m). Haleakala High Altitude Observatory is operated by IfA/UH, and we have been making observation of planets there since 2000.
Currently, our observation facility consists of a 40cm telescope. We have been making observations of faint atmospheric and plasma features around bright planets, Io plasma torus, Mercury and Lunar sodium tail, and so on. Atmospheric escapes from Mars and Venus, the exoplanets close to mother stars are also possible future important topics. When we try to observe those faint emissions surrounding the bright objects, intense scattered light causes a serious problem. The new telescope shall avoid the diffraction due to a spider structure that holds a secondary mirror and to minimize the scattered light from mirror surfaces as far as possible. Such telescope with a wide dynamic range dedicated to planetary and exoplanetary sciences does not exist yet.
The project, called PLANETS (Poralized Light from Atmospheres of Nearby Extra Terrestrial Planets), develops a new telescope (tentatively named as JHET; Japan Hawaii Europe Telescope) which consists of an off-axis primary mirror with a diameter of 1.8m, and Gregorian optics on an equatorial mount. State-of-art adaptive optics and masking technologies will also be adopted to eliminate the scattering light. This telescope will enables us to do spectro-polarimetric observations and faint plasma and atmospheres around the bright bodies.
We will introduce the progress of our ground-based observations and the future plan involving the wide area of the international communities.

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