SCExAO, an instrument with a dual purpose: perform cutting-edge science and develop new technologies

Julien Lozi (1) , Olivier Guyon (1, 2, 3) , Nemanja Jovanovic (4) , Sean Goebel (1, 5) , Prashant Pathak (1, 6) , Nour Skaf (1) , Ananya Sahoo (1, 6) , Barnaby Norris (7) , Frantz Martinache (8) , Mamadou N'Diaye (8) , Ben Mazin (9) , Alex Walter (9) , Peter Tuthill (7) , Tomoyuki Kudo (1) , Hajime Kawahara (10) , Takayuki Kotani (11) , Michael Ireland (12) , Nick Cvetojevic (13) , Elsa Huby (13) , Sylvestre Lacour (13) , Sebastien Vievard (1, 3, 13) , Tyler Groff (14) , Jeffrey Chilcote (15) , Jeremy Kasdin (16) , Justin Knight (2) , Frans Snik (17) , David Doelman (17) , Yosuke Minowa (1) , Christophe Clergeon (1) , Naruhisa Takato (1) , Motohide Tamura (11) , Thayne Currie (1) , Hideki Takami (11) , Masa Hayashi (11)

1 Subaru Telescope
2 Wyant College of Optical Sciences [University of Arizona]
3 NINS - National Institutes of Natural Sciences [Tokyo]
4 CALTECH - California Institute of Technology
5 Institute for astronomy [Hilo, Hawaï]
6 SOKENDAI - Graduate University for Advanced Studies [Hayama]
7 Macquarie University
8 LAGRANGE - Joseph Louis LAGRANGE
9 UC Santa Barbara - University of California [Santa Barbara]
10 UTokyo - The University of Tokyo
11 NAOJ - National Astronomical Observatory of Japan
12 ANU - Australian National University
13 LESIA - Laboratoire d'études spatiales et d'instrumentation en astrophysique
14 GSFC - NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
15 Stanford University
16 Princeton University
17 Leiden Observatory [Leiden]

The Subaru Coronagraphic Extreme Adaptive Optics (SCExAO) instrument is an extremely modular high-contrast instrument installed on the Subaru telescope in Hawaii. SCExAO has a dual purpose. Its position in the northern hemisphere on a 8-meter telescope makes it a prime instrument for the detection and characterization of exoplanets and stellar environments over a large portion of the sky. In addition, SCExAO's unique design makes it the ideal instrument to test innovative technologies and algorithms quickly in a laboratory setup and subsequently deploy them on-sky. SCExAO benefits from a first stage of wavefront correction with the facility adaptive optics AO188, and splits the 600-2400 nm spectrum towards a variety of modules, in visible and near infrared, optimized for a large range of science cases. The integral field spectrograph CHARIS, with its J, H or K-band high-resolution mode or its broadband low-resolution mode, makes SCExAO a prime instrument for exoplanet detection and characterization. Here we report on the recent developments and scientific results of the SCExAO instrument. Recent upgrades were performed on a number of modules, like the visible polarimetric module VAMPIRES, the high-performance infrared coronagraphs, various wavefront control algorithms, as well as the real-time controller of AO188. The newest addition is the 20k-pixel Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detector (MKIDS) Exoplanet Camera (MEC) that will allow for previously unexplored science and technology developments. MEC, coupled with novel photon-counting speckle control, brings SCExAO closer to the final design of future high-contrast instruments optimized for Giant Segmented Mirror Telescopes (GSMTs).

Domaines: Astrophysique [astro-ph]

Julien Lozi, Olivier Guyon, Nemanja Jovanovic, Sean Goebel, Prashant Pathak, et al.. SCExAO, an instrument with a dual purpose: perform cutting-edge science and develop new technologies. Adaptive Optics Systems VI, Jun 2018, Austin, United States. pp.270, ⟨10.1117/12.2314282⟩. ⟨hal-02308656⟩