Near-infrared coronagraph imager on the Subaru 8m telescope

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.