Speaker
Description
Direct imaging is a technique that allows us to spatially resolve the planet from its host star. Due to the big difference in flux between star and planet, a very high contrast must be reached to observe the planet that would be otherwise hidden in the glare of the star.
Coronagraphs are optical systems that work as angular filters, suppressing the on-axis star light and letting the off-axis planet light go through. A promising coronagraph is the Phase-Induced Amplitude Apodization Complex Mask Coronagraph (PIAACMC), which uses a set of aspheric lenses to apodize the entrance pupil without losses and a phase-shifting focal plane mask for the suppression. The lossless apodization allows us to maintain high throughput and achieve a small inner-working angle, unlocking the capability to search for planets at the diffraction limit. The masks are completely manufactured in-house at Leiden University with Nanoscribe, a micro-3D-printer that uses two-photon polymerization to achieve submicron precision in height. This manufacturing method allows us to print smooth structures, so, unlike lithography, it is not limited to a small number of etching steps.
In this talk, I will discuss the characterisation of the manufacturing process and show some preliminary results from the PIAACMC lab testing and on-sky observations with MagAO-X, an extreme adaptive optics instrument for the 6.5-meter Magellan Clay telescope at Las Campanas Observatory (Chile). This serves as a demonstration of the PIAACMC capability of observing exoplanets at close separations (~1𝜆/D) and at extreme contrast at the diffraction limit.
| Talk category | Instrumentation (contact wijnen@strw.leidenuniv.nl) |
|---|---|
| Preference for a talk or poster | Talk |
| Talk preference for PhD students | 1st year PhD |
