Near-infrared coronagraph imager on the Subaru 8 m telescope

Koji Murakawa; Hiroshi Suto; Motohide Tamura; Hideki Takami; Naruhisa Takato; Saeko S. Hayashi; Yoshiyuki Doi; Norio Kaifu; Yutaka Hayano; Wolfgang Gaessler; Yukiko Kamata

doi:10.1117/12.460762

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7 March 2003 Near-infrared coronagraph imager on the Subaru 8m telescope

Koji Murakawa, Hiroshi Suto, Motohide Tamura, Hideki Takami, Naruhisa Takato, Saeko S. Hayashi, Yoshiyuki Doi, Norio Kaifu, Yutaka Hayano, Wolfgang Gaessler, Yukiko Kamata

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 4841, Instrument Design and Performance for Optical/Infrared Ground-based Telescopes; (2003) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.460762
Event: Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation, 2002, Waikoloa, Hawai'i, United States

Abstract

We introduce a near-infrared camera named coronagraph imager with adaptive optics (CIAO) mounted on the Subaru 8m telescope. Combined with the Subaru 36 elements adaptive optics (AO), CIAO can produce nearly diffraction limited image with approximately 0.07 arcsec FWHM at K band and high dynamic range imaging with approximately 10 mag difference at 1 arcsec separation under typical seeing conditions. We have carried out performance tests of imaging without and with coronagraph mask since its first light observation held on 2000 February. Because of limited weather conditions, the performance under best seeing conditions has not been tested yet. At a typical natural seeing condition of 0.4 - 0.8 arcsec, halo component of PSF using 0.2 - 0.8 arcsec mask can be reduced up to 70% comparing with that without mask using AO. Even after correction, residual wave front error has typically 1.2 rad² which corresponds to the Strehl ratio of approximately 0.3 at K band. Such wave front errors degrades the image quality; this is a common problem of coronagraph on the ground-based telescope with non high-order AO. Nevertheless we emphasize that there are various advantages on our coronagraph: the clean PSF of CIAO, reduction of readout noise, and less effect of detector memory problem. Compared with coronagraphs on smaller telescopes, the PSF shape is sharper and it brings higher detectability of sources around bright objects.

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Koji Murakawa, Hiroshi Suto, Motohide Tamura, Hideki Takami, Naruhisa Takato, Saeko S. Hayashi, Yoshiyuki Doi, Norio Kaifu, Yutaka Hayano, Wolfgang Gaessler, and Yukiko Kamata "Near-infrared coronagraph imager on the Subaru 8m telescope", Proc. SPIE 4841, Instrument Design and Performance for Optical/Infrared Ground-based Telescopes, (7 March 2003); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.460762

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