FIRST, a fibered aperture masking instrument: on-sky results

Elsa Huby (1, 2) , Guy Perrin (1, 2) , Franck Marchis (3) , Sylvestre Lacour (1, 2) , Takayuki Kotani (4) , Gaspard Duchêne (5) , Élodie Choquet (1, 2) , Elinor Gates (6) , Julien M. Woillez (7) , Olivier Lai (8)

1 LESIA - Laboratoire d'études spatiales et d'instrumentation en astrophysique
2 Haute résolution angulaire en astrophysique
3 SETI Institute (United States)
4 ISAS - Institute of Space and Astronautical Science
5 UCBerkeley - University of California
6 University of California, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Observatories, Lick Observatory
7 W. M. Keck Observatory
8 CFHT - Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Corporation

We present on-sky results obtained with the visible light prototype of the Fibered Imager foR Single Telescope (FIRST) mounted on the 3-m Shane Telescope at Lick Observatory and using its Adaptive Optics system. This instrument is dedicated to high angular resolution and high dynamic range imaging. Its principle combines both techniques of single-mode fiber interferometry and pupil remapping. Simulations predict a dynamic range up to 10⁶ at /D, or at a few tens of milliarcseconds at 630nm using an 8-m telescope. Laboratory experiments based on a 9-fiber prototype working in the 600nm-900nm spectral band successfully demonstrated the power of the concept. The same prototype has been set-up on the 3-m Shane telescope in July 2010. In this paper, we present the on-sky results obtained in October 2011 with an improved version of the instrument using 18 fibers. They clearly show the detection of the binary star Capella at the diffraction limit of the telescope.lambda

Domaines: Astrophysique [astro-ph]

Elsa Huby, Guy Perrin, Franck Marchis, Sylvestre Lacour, Takayuki Kotani, et al.. FIRST, a fibered aperture masking instrument: on-sky results. Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy IV, Jul 2012, Amsterdam, Netherlands. ⟨10.1117/12.925615⟩. ⟨hal-03724486⟩