Physics – Optics
Scientific paper
Dec 2007
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007aas...211.3005m&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #211, #30.05; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.782
Physics
Optics
1
Scientific paper
Direct detection of extrasolar planets would be a major step in the study of other solar systems, sensitive to planets beyond the period cutoff of Doppler surveys. Furthermore, such planets can be spectrally characterized to measure temperature, gravity, and perhaps composition, shedding light on planet formation and evolution. Surveys of 50-100 young stars with current generation AO systems have excluded the presence of massive (2-10 MJ), young (? Myr) planets in wide (? AU) orbits, but to probe 5-20 AU scales around a large sample of target stars will require dedicated next-generation instruments. One such facility will be the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI). It combines a 2000-actuator adaptive optics system, an apodized-pupil Lyot coronagraph, a precision infrared interferometer for real-time wavefront calibration at the nanometer level, and a near-infrared integral field spectrograph for detection and characterization of the target planets. GPI will be able to achieve Strehl ratios > 0.9 at 1.65 microns and to observe a broad sample of science targets with I band magnitudes less than 9. In addition to planet detection, GPI will also be capable of polarimetric imaging of circumstellar dust disks, studies of evolved stars, and high-Strehl imaging spectroscopy of bright targets - opening up a new field in the characterization of the environments of nearby stars. I will present an overview of the instrument design and its scientific capabilities. GPI is currently in the design phase, scheduled for deployment as a facility instrument on the Gemini South telescope in early 2011.
Portions of this work performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. The Gemini Observatory is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under a cooperative agreement with the NSF on behalf of the Gemini partnership.
Doyon Rene
Gemini Planet Imager Team
Graham James R.
Larkin Jason
Macintosh Bruce
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