Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2006-01-03
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
5 pages, 3 figures, 1 table. Presented at IAU Colloquium 200, Direct Imaging of Exoplanets: Science and Techniques
Scientific paper
10.1017/S1743921306009975
We discuss the instrumental and data reduction techniques used to suppress speckle noise with the Simultaneous Differential Imager (SDI) implemented at the VLT and the MMT. SDI uses a double Wollaston prism and a quad filter to take 4 identical images simultaneously at 3 wavelengths surrounding the 1.62 um methane bandhead found in the spectrum of cool brown dwarfs and gas giants. By performing a difference of images in these filters, speckle noise from the primary can be significantly attenuated, resulting in photon noise limited data past 0.5''. Non-trivial data reduction tools are necessary to pipeline the simultaneous differential imaging. Here we discuss a custom algorithm implemented in IDL to perform this reduction. The script performs basic data reduction tasks but also precisely aligns images taken in each of the filters using a custom shift and subtract routine. In our survey of nearby young stars at the VLT and MMT (see Biller et al., this conference), we achieved H band contrasts >25000 (5 sigma Delta F1(1.575 um) > 10.0 mag, Delta H > 11.5 mag for a T6 spectral type object) at a separation of 0.5" from the primary star. We believe that our SDI images are among the highest contrast astronomical images ever made from ground or space for methane rich companions.
Biller Beth A.
Brandner Wolfgang
Close Laird M.
Hartung Markus
Kellner Stephan
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