The ESPRI project: astrometric exoplanet search with PRIMA I. Instrument description and performance of first light observations

The ESPRI project relies on the astrometric capabilities offered by the PRIMA facility of the Very Large Telescope Interferometer for the discovery and study of planetary systems. Our survey consists of obtaining high-precision astrometry for a large sample of stars over several years and to detect their barycentric motions due to orbiting planets. We present the operation principle, the instrument's implementation, and the results of a first series of test observations. A comprehensive overview of the instrument infrastructure is given and the observation strategy for dual-field relative astrometry is presented. The differential delay lines, a key component of the PRIMA facility which was delivered by the ESPRI consortium, are described and their performance within the facility is discussed. Observations of bright visual binaries are used to test the observation procedures and to establish the instrument's astrometric precision and accuracy. The data reduction strategy for astrometry and the necessary corrections to the raw data are presented. Adaptive optics observations with NACO are used as an independent verification of PRIMA astrometric observations. The PRIMA facility was used to carry out tests of astrometric observations. The astrometric performance in terms of precision is limited by the atmospheric turbulence at a level close to the theoretical expectations and a precision of 30 micro-arcseconds was achieved. In contrast, the astrometric accuracy is insufficient for the goals of the ESPRI project and is currently limited by systematic errors that originate in the part of the interferometer beamtrain which is not monitored by the internal metrology system. Our observations led to the definition of corrective actions required to make the facility ready for carrying out the ESPRI search for extrasolar planets.Comment: 32 pages, 39 figures, Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic

On bubble clustering and energy spectra in pseudo-turbulence

3D-Particle Tracking (3D-PTV) and Phase Sensitive Constant Temperature Anemometry in pseudo-turbulence--i.e., flow solely driven by rising bubbles-- were performed to investigate bubble clustering and to obtain the mean bubble rise velocity, distributions of bubble velocities, and energy spectra at dilute gas concentrations ($\alpha \leq2.2$%). To characterize the clustering the pair correlation function $G(r,\theta)$ was calculated. The deformable bubbles with equivalent bubble diameter $d_b=4-5$ mm were found to cluster within a radial distance of a few bubble radii with a preferred vertical orientation. This vertical alignment was present at both small and large scales. For small distances also some horizontal clustering was found. The large number of data-points and the non intrusiveness of PTV allowed to obtain well-converged Probability Density Functions (PDFs) of the bubble velocity. The PDFs had a non-Gaussian form for all velocity components and intermittency effects could be observed. The energy spectrum of the liquid velocity fluctuations decayed with a power law of -3.2, different from the $\approx -5/3$ found for homogeneous isotropic turbulence, but close to the prediction -3 by \cite{lance} for pseudo-turbulence

NACO/SAM observations of sources at the Galactic Center

Sparse aperture masking (SAM) interferometry combined with Adaptive Optics (AO) is a technique that is uniquely suited to investigate structures near the diffraction limit of large telescopes. The strengths of the technique are a robust calibration of the Point Spread Function (PSF) while maintaining a relatively high dynamic range. We used SAM+AO observations to investigate the circumstellar environment of several bright sources with infrared excess in the central parsec of the Galaxy. For our observations, unstable atmospheric conditions as well as significant residuals after the background subtraction presented serious problems for the standard approach of calibrating SAM data via interspersed observations of reference stars. We circumvented these difficulties by constructing a synthesized calibrator directly from sources within the field-of-view. When observing crowded fields, this novel method can boost the efficiency of SAM observations because it renders interspersed calibrator observations unnecessary. Here, we presented the first NaCo/SAM images reconstructed using this method.Comment: 8 pages, 10 figures, proceedings of the conference "Astrophysics at High Angular Resolution" (AHAR-2011

CVABS: Moving Object Segmentation with Common Vector Approach for Videos

Background modelling is a fundamental step for several real-time computer vision applications that requires security systems and monitoring. An accurate background model helps detecting activity of moving objects in the video. In this work, we have developed a new subspace based background modelling algorithm using the concept of Common Vector Approach with Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization. Once the background model that involves the common characteristic of different views corresponding to the same scene is acquired, a smart foreground detection and background updating procedure is applied based on dynamic control parameters. A variety of experiments is conducted on different problem types related to dynamic backgrounds. Several types of metrics are utilized as objective measures and the obtained visual results are judged subjectively. It was observed that the proposed method stands successfully for all problem types reported on CDNet2014 dataset by updating the background frames with a self-learning feedback mechanism.Comment: 12 Pages, 4 Figures, 1 Tabl

Towards Real-Time Detection and Tracking of Spatio-Temporal Features: Blob-Filaments in Fusion Plasma

A novel algorithm and implementation of real-time identification and tracking of blob-filaments in fusion reactor data is presented. Similar spatio-temporal features are important in many other applications, for example, ignition kernels in combustion and tumor cells in a medical image. This work presents an approach for extracting these features by dividing the overall task into three steps: local identification of feature cells, grouping feature cells into extended feature, and tracking movement of feature through overlapping in space. Through our extensive work in parallelization, we demonstrate that this approach can effectively make use of a large number of compute nodes to detect and track blob-filaments in real time in fusion plasma. On a set of 30GB fusion simulation data, we observed linear speedup on 1024 processes and completed blob detection in less than three milliseconds using Edison, a Cray XC30 system at NERSC.Comment: 14 pages, 40 figure

Integration of the atmospheric fluctuations in a dual-field optical interferometer: the short exposure regime

Spatial phase-referencing in dual-field optical interferometry is reconsidered. Our analysis is based on the 2-sample variance of the differential phase between target and reference star. We show that averaging over time of the atmospheric effects depends on this 2-sample phase variance (Allan variance) rather than on the true variance. The proper expression for fringe smearing beyond the isoplanatic angle is derived. With simulations of atmospheric effects, based on a Paranal turbulence model, we show how the performances of a dual-field optical interferometer can be evaluated in a diagram 'separation angle' versus 'magnitude of faint object'. In this diagram, a domain with short exposure is found to be most useful for interferometry, with about the same magnitude limits in the H and K bands. With star counts from a Galaxy model, we evaluate the sky coverage for differential astrometry and detection of exoplanets, i.e. likelihood of faint reference stars in the vicinity of a bright target. With the 2mass survey, we evaluate sky coverage for phase-referencing, i.e. avaibility of a bright enough star for main delay tracking in the vicinity of any target direction.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in A&