FIRST, a fibered aperture masking instrument: on-sky results

We present on-sky results obtained with the visible light prototype of the Fibered Imager foR Single Telescope (FIRST) mounted on the 3-m Shane Telescope at Lick Observatory and using its Adaptive Optics system. This instrument is dedicated to high angular resolution and high dynamic range imaging. Its principle combines both techniques of single-mode fiber interferometry and pupil remapping. Simulations predict a dynamic range up to 106 at /D, or at a few tens of milliarcseconds at 630nm using an 8-m telescope. Laboratory experiments based on a 9-fiber prototype working in the 600nm–900nm spectral band successfully demonstrated the power of the concept. The same prototype has been set-up on the 3-m Shane telescope in July 2010. In this paper, we present the on-sky results obtained in October 2011 with an improved version of the instrument using 18 fibers. They clearly show the detection of the binary star Capella at the diffraction limit of the telescope.λ

[1]  G. Perrin,et al.  High dynamic range imaging by pupil single‐mode filtering and remapping , 2006 .

[2]  B. Macintosh,et al.  Direct Imaging of Multiple Planets Orbiting the Star HR 8799 , 2008, Science.

[3]  M. D. Perrin,et al.  MID-INFRARED SIZE SURVEY OF YOUNG STELLAR OBJECTS: DESCRIPTION OF KECK SEGMENT-TILTING EXPERIMENT AND BASIC RESULTS , 2009, 0905.3495.

[4]  B. Macintosh,et al.  Images of a fourth planet orbiting HR 8799 , 2010, Nature.

[5]  Guillermo Torres,et al.  BINARY ORBIT, PHYSICAL PROPERTIES, AND EVOLUTIONARY STATE OF CAPELLA (α AURIGAE) , 2009, 0906.0977.

[6]  C. A. Haniff,et al.  The first images from optical aperture synthesis , 1987, Nature.

[7]  A. Labeyrie.  Attainment of diffraction limited resolution in large telescopes by Fourier analysing speckle patterns in star images , 1970 .

[8]  G. Perrin,et al.  High dynamic range imaging with a single-mode pupil remapping system: a self-calibration algorithm for redundant interferometric arrays , 2006 .

[9]  Sara Seager,et al.  Hot Jupiter secondary eclipses measured by Kepler , 2011 .

[10]  K. J. Burns,et al.  FIRST, a fibered aperture masking instrument I. First on-sky test results , 2012, 1203.5075.

[11]  A. Boccaletti,et al.  A Giant Planet Imaged in the Disk of the Young Star β Pictoris , 2010, Science.

[12]  Fabien Malbet,et al.  Data reduction for the AMBER instrument , 2004, SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation.

[13]  Peter G. Tuthill,et al.  Sparse Aperture Masking at the VLT , 2010 .