Portable Adaptive Optics for Exoplanet Imaging

TL;DR

The Portable Adaptive Optics (PAO) system offers a low-cost, compact solution for direct exoplanet imaging on medium-sized telescopes, achieving high contrast and successfully detecting known exoplanets.

Contribution

This paper introduces the PAO system, demonstrating its high-contrast imaging capabilities and successful exoplanet detection on a 3.5-meter telescope, which is novel for low-cost, portable AO solutions.

Findings

PAO achieves Strehl ratio >60% in H band under median seeing conditions.

Contrast ratios of 1.3×10^{-5} and 3.3×10^{-6} at 0.36'' for stars of Vmag 5-9.

Successful detection and analysis of exoplanet κ And b.

Abstract

The Portable Adaptive Optics (PAO) is a low-cost and compact system, designed for 4-meter class telescopes that have no Adaptive Optics (AO), because of the physical space limitation at the Nasmyth or Cassegrain focus and the historically high cost of the conventional AO. The initial scientific observations of the PAO are focused on the direct imaging of exoplanets and sub-stellar companions. This paper discusses the PAO concept and the associated high-contrast imaging performance in our recent observational runs. PAO is delivering a Strehl ratio better than $60\%$ in $H$ band under median seeing conditions of $1 ''$. Combined with our dedicated image rotation and subtraction (IRS) technique and the optimized IRS (O-IRS) algorithm, the averaged contrast ratio for a $5\leq V\rm_{mag} \leq 9$ primary star is $1.3 \times 10^{-5}$ and $3.3 \times 10^{-6}$ at angular distance of $0.36 ''$ under exposure time of 7 minutes and 2 hours, respectively. PAO has successfully revealed the known exoplanet of $\kappa$ And b, in our recent observation at 3.5-meter ARC telescope at Apache Point Observatory. We have performed the associated astrometry and photometry analysis of the recovered $\kappa$ And b planet, which gives a projected separation of $0.984 \pm 0.05 ''$, a position angle of $51.1 \pm 0.5^{\circ}$, and a mass of $10.15_{-1.255}^{+2.19}M_{\rm Jup}$. These results demonstrate that PAO can be used for direct imaging of exoplanets with medium-sized telescopes.