An off-axis four-quadrant phase-mask coronagraph for Palomar: high contrast near bright stars imager

Details An off-axis four-quadrant phase-mask coronagraph for Palomar: high contrast near bright stars imager An off-axis four-quadrant phase-mask coronagraph for Palomar: high contrast near bright stars imager

Aug 2005

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2005spie.5905..261h&link_type=abstract

Techniques and Instrumentation for Detection of Exoplanets II. Edited by Coulter, Daniel R. Proceedings of the SPIE, Volume 590

Physics

4

Scientific paper

Direct detection of planets around nearby stars requires the development of high-contrast imaging techniques, because of their very different respective fluxes. This led us to investigate the new coronagraphic approach based on the use of a four-quadrant phase mask (FQPM). Combined with high-level wavefront correction on an unobscured off-axis section of a large telescope, this method allows high-contrast imaging very close to stars. Calculations indicate that for a given ground-based on-axis telescope, use of such an off-axis coronagraph provides a near-neighbor detection capability superior to that of a traditional coronagraph utilizing the full telescope aperture. A near-infrared laboratory experiment was first used to test our FQPM devices, and a rejection of 2000:1 was achieved. We next built an FQPM instrument to test the feasibility of near-neighbor observations with our new off-axis approach on a ground-based telescope. In June 2005, we deployed our instrument to the Palomar 200-inch telescope, using existing facilities as much as possible for rapid implementation. In these initial observations, stars were rejected to about the 100:1 level. Here we discuss our laboratory and on-sky experiments, and the results obtained so far.

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