High contrast imaging at the LBT: the LEECH exoplanet imaging survey
Abstract
In Spring 2013, the LEECH (LBTI Exozodi Exoplanet Common Hunt) survey began its ~130-night campaign from the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) atop Mt Graham, Arizona. This survey benefits from the many technological achievements of the LBT, including two 8.4-meter mirrors on a single fixed mount, dual adaptive secondary mirrors for high Strehl performance, and a cold beam combiner to dramatically reduce the telescope's overall background emissivity. LEECH neatly complements other high-contrast planet imaging efforts by observing stars at L' (3.8 μm), as opposed to the shorter wavelength near-infrared bands (1-2.4 μm) of other surveys. This portion of the spectrum offers deep mass sensitivity, especially around nearby adolescent (~0.1-1 Gyr) stars. LEECH's contrast is competitive with other extreme adaptive optics systems, while providing an alternative survey strategy. Additionally, LEECH is characterizing known exoplanetary systems with observations from 3-5μm in preparation for JWST.
Additional Information
© 2014 SPIE. The authors thank Bruce Macintosh for his helpful comments. The LBT is an international collaboration among institutions in the United States, Italy and Germany. LBT Corporation partners are: The University of Arizona on behalf of the Arizona university system; Istituto Nazionale di Astrosica, Italy; LBT Beteiligungsgesellschaft, Germany, representing the Max-Planck Society, the Astrophysical Institute Potsdam, and Heidelberg University; The Ohio State University, and The Research Corporation, on behalf of The University of Notre Dame, University of Minnesota and University of Virginia. This research was supported by NASA's Origins of Solar Systems Program, grant NNX13AJ17G. The Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer is funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as part of its Exoplanet Exploration program. LMIRcam is funded by the National Science Foundation through grant NSF AST-0705296. EB is supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).Attached Files
Published - Skemer_2014p91480L.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 61062
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20151013-133731100
- NNX13AJ17G
- NASA
- AST-0705296
- NSF
- Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)
- Created
-
2015-10-15Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Series Name
- Proceedings of SPIE
- Series Volume or Issue Number
- 9148