The PAlomar Radial Velocity Instrument (PARVI) is a diffraction-limited, high-resolution spectrograph connected by single-mode fiber to the 200 inch Hale telescope at Palomar Observatory. Here, we present on-sky results for HD 189733 obtained during PARVI’s commissioning phase. We first describe the implementation of our spectral extraction and radial velocity (RV) generation codes. Through RV monitoring, we detect the Rossiter–Mclaughlin signal of the transiting planet HD 189733 b. We further detect the presence of water and carbon monoxide in the atmosphere of HD 189733 b via transmission spectroscopy. This work demonstrates PARVI’s high-resolution spectral capabilities at H band and current intra-night Doppler stability of ∼4 to 10 m s − 1 on an early K dwarf. Finally, we discuss the limitations to this work and ongoing efforts to characterize and improve the Doppler performance of PARVI to the design goal of ∼1 m s − 1 for late-type stars.
Palomar’s Project 1640 (P1640) is the first stellar coronagraph to regularly use active coronagraphic wavefront control (CWFC). For this it has a hierarchy of offset wavefront sensors (WFS), the most important of which is the higher-order WFS (called CAL), which tracks quasi-static modes between 2-35 cycles-per-aperture. The wavefront is measured in the coronagraph at 0.01 Hz rates, providing slope targets to the upstream Palm 3000 adaptive optics (AO) system. The CWFC handles all non-common path distortions up to the coronagraphic focal plane mask, but does not sense second order modes between the WFSs and the science integral field unit (IFU); these modes determine the system’s current limit. We have two CWFC operating modes: (1) P-mode, where we only control phases, generating double-sided darkholes by correcting to the largest controllable spatial frequencies, and (2) E-mode, where we can control amplitudes and phases, generating single-sided dark-holes in specified regions-of-interest. We describe the performance and limitations of both these modes, and discuss the improvements we are considering going forward.
P1640 high contrast imaging system on the Palomar 200 inch Telescope consists of an apodized-pupil Lyot coronagraph, the PALM-3000 adaptive optics (P3K-AO), and P1640 Calibrator (CAL). Science images are recorded by an integral field spectrograph covering J-H bands for detecting and characterizing stellar companions. With aberrations from atmosphere corrected by the P3K-AO, instrument performance is limited mainly by the quasi-static speckles due to noncommon path wavefront aberrations for the light to propagate to the P3K-AO wavefront sensor and to the coronagraph mask. The non-common path wavefront aberrations are sensed by CAL, which measures the post-coronagraph E-field using interferometry, and can be effectively corrected by offsetting the P3K-AO deformable mirror target position accordingly. Previously, we have demonstrated using CAL measurements to correct high order wavefront aberrations, which is directly connected to the static speckles in the image plane. Low order wavefront, on the other hand, usually of larger amplitudes, causes light to leak through the coronagraph making the whole image plane brighter. Knowledge error in low order wavefront aberrations can also affect the estimation of the high order wavefront. Even though, CAL is designed to sense efficiently high order wavefront aberrations, the low order wavefront front can be inferred with less sensitivity. Here, we describe our method for estimating both low and high order wavefront aberrations using CAL measurements by propagating the post-coronagraph E-field to a pupil before the coronagraph. We present the results from applying this method to both simulated and experiment data.
The Project 1640 instrument on the 200-inch Hale telescope at Palomar Observatory is a coronagraphic instru- ment with an integral eld spectrograph at the back end, designed to nd 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 con guration, measures the quasistatic components of the complex electric eld in the pupil plane following the coronagraphic stop. Two additional sensors measure and control low-order modes. These eld 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.
P1640 calibrator is a wavefront sensor working with the P1640 coronagraph and the Palomar 3000 actuator
adaptive optics system (P3K) at the Palomar 200 inch Hale telescope. It measures the wavefront by interfering
post-coronagraph light with a reference beam formed by low-pass filtering the blocked light from the coronagraph
focal plane mask. The P1640 instrument has a similar architecture to the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) and its
performance is currently limited by the quasi-static speckles due to non-common path wavefront errors, which
comes from the non-common path for the light to arrive at the AO wavefront sensor and the coronagraph mask.
By measuring the wavefront after the coronagraph mask, the non-common path wavefront error can be estimated
and corrected by feeding back the error signal to the deformable mirror (DM) of the P3K AO system. Here, we
present a first order wavefront estimation algorithm and an instrument calibration scheme used in experiments
done recently at Palomar observatory. We calibrate the P1640 calibrator by measuring its responses to poking
DM actuators with a sparse checkerboard pattern at different amplitudes. The calibration yields a complex
normalization factor for wavefront estimation and establishes the registration of the DM actuators at the pupil
camera of the P1640 calibrator, necessary for wavefront correction. Improvement of imaging quality after feeding
back the wavefront correction to the AO system demonstrated the efficacy of the algorithm.
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.
Testbeds and production systems need lightweight, capable, and rapidly developed applications. We have developed several such scripts for testing and operating the Keck Interferometer. Two stand-alone (Tcl/Tk script) applications implemented to support the Keck Interferometer are discussed. The first is a front end to automatic and manual optical alignment embedded software, developed using the Keck Observatory Keyword API extension. The second is a user interface to the Interferometer Sequencer that communicates with it via both Keywords and Common Orbject Request Broker Architecture (CORBA). We discuss client-side CORBA scripts implemented in Tcl, Perl and Python. These are all technologies that are either currently being used on testbeds at JPL or being evaluated for future use. Finally, a Python example demonstrating implementation of a simple CORBA server is presented.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has built several optical interferometers using a common software framework developed for this purpose. The heart of this framework is the Realtime Control (RTC) software product. RTC has evolved from its initial implementation to include a powerful dynamic configuration capability and to use Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) technology for commanding and telemetry. This paper describes the current implementation of this toolkit.
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