Status of the PALM-3000 high order adaptive optics instrument

We report on the status of PALM-3000, the second generation adaptive optics instrument for the 5.1 meter Hale telescope at Palomar Observatory. PALM-3000 was released as a facility class instrument in October 2011, and has since been used on the Hale telescope a total of over 250 nights. In the past year, the PALM-3000 team introduced several instrument upgrades, including the release of the 32x32 pupil sampling mode which allows for correction on fainter guide stars, the upgrade of wavefront sensor relay optics, the diagnosis and repair of hardware problems, and the release of software improvements. We describe the performance of the PALM-3000 instrument as a result of these upgrades, and provide on-sky results. In the 32x32 pupil sampling mode (15.8 cm per subaperture), we have achieved K-band strehl ratios as high as 11% on a 14.4 mv star, and in the 64x64 pupil sampling mode (8.1 cm per subaperture), we have achieved K-band strehl ratios as high as 86% on stars brighter than 7th m_v

Spectral Typing of Late Type Stellar Companions to Young Stars from Low Dispersion Near-Infrared Integral Field Unit Data

We used the Project 1640 near-infrared coronagraph and integral field spectrograph to observe 19 young solar type stars. Five of these stars are known binary stars and we detected the late-type secondaries and were able to measure their JH spectra with a resolution of R\sim30. The reduced, extracted, and calibrated spectra were compared to template spectra from the IRTF spectral library. With this comparison we test the accuracy and consistency of spectral type determination with the low-resolution near-infrared spectra from P1640. Additionally, we determine effective temperature and surface gravity of the companions by fitting synthetic spectra calculated with the PHOENIX model atmosphere code. We also present several new epochs of astrometry of each of the systems. Together these data increase our knowledge and understanding of the stellar make up of these systems. In addition to the astronomical results, the analysis presented helps validate the Project 1640 data reduction and spectral extraction processes and the utility of low-resolution, near-infrared spectra for characterizing late-type companions in multiple systems.Comment: Accepted to Astronomical Journal, 25 pages, 8 figure

Electric Field Conjugation with the Project 1640 coronagraph

The Project 1640 instrument on the 200-inch Hale telescope at Palomar Observatory is a coronagraphic instrument with an integral field spectrograph at the back end, designed to find young, self-luminous planets around nearby stars. To reach the necessary contrast for this, the PALM-3000 adaptive optics system corrects for fast atmospheric speckles, while CAL, a phase-shifting interferometer in a Mach-Zehnder configuration, measures the quasistatic components of the complex electric field in the pupil plane following the coronagraphic stop. Two additional sensors measure and control low-order modes. These field measurements may then be combined with a system model and data taken separately using a white-light source internal to the AO system to correct for both phase and amplitude aberrations. Here, we discuss and demonstrate the procedure to maintain a half-plane dark hole in the image plane while the spectrograph is taking data, including initial on-sky performance.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, in Proceedings of SPIE, 8864-19 (2013

Project 1640: the world's first ExAO coronagraphic hyperspectral imager for comparative planetary science

Project 1640, a high-contrast spectral-imaging effort involving a coordinated set of instrumentation and software, built at AMNH, JPL, Cambridge and Caltech, has been commissioned and is fully operational. This novel suite of instrumentation includes a 3388+241-actuator adaptive optics system, an optimized apodized pupil Lyot coronagraph, an integral field spectrograph, and an interferometric calibration wave front sensor. Project 1640 is the first of its kind of instrumentation, designed to image and characterize planetary systems around nearby stars, employing a variety of techniques to break the speckle-noise barrier. It is operational roughly one year before any similar project, with the goal of reaching a contrast of 10^(-7) at 1 arcsecond separation. We describe the instrument, highlight recent results, and document on-sky performance at the start of a 3-year, 99-night survey at the Palomar 5-m Hale telescope

Project 1640: the world's first ExAO coronagraphic hyperspectral imager for comparative planetary science

Project 1640, a high-contrast spectral-imaging effort involving a coordinated set of instrumentation and software, built at AMNH, JPL, Cambridge and Caltech, has been commissioned and is fully operational. This novel suite of instrumentation includes a 3388+241-actuator adaptive optics system, an optimized apodized pupil Lyot coronagraph, an integral field spectrograph, and an interferometric calibration wave front sensor. Project 1640 is the first of its kind of instrumentation, designed to image and characterize planetary systems around nearby stars, employing a variety of techniques to break the speckle-noise barrier. It is operational roughly one year before any similar project, with the goal of reaching a contrast of 10^(-7) at 1 arcsecond separation. We describe the instrument, highlight recent results, and document on-sky performance at the start of a 3-year, 99-night survey at the Palomar 5-m Hale telescope