1. Status of the SCExAO instrument: recent technology upgrades and path to a system-level demonstrator for PSI
- Author
-
Tomoyuki Kudo, Julien Lozi, Christophe Clergeon, Olivier Guyon, Chrstian Schwab, Theodoros Anagnos, Jared R. Males, Naoshi Murakami, Motohide Tamura, B. Norris, Hideki Takami, Vincent Deo, Takayuki Kotani, Yoshito H. Ono, Ruslan Belikov, Ananya Sahoo, Eduardo Bendek, Yosuke Minowa, N. Jeremy Kasdin, Eugene Pluzhnik, Sébastien Vievard, Peter G. Tuthill, Nemanja Jovanovic, Kevin Barjot, Frantz Martinache, David S. Doelman, Sarah Steiger, Justin Knight, Nick Cvetojevic, Thayne Currie, Michael Ireland, Naruhisa Takato, Sylvestre Lacour, Romain Laugier, Taichi Uyama, Jeffrey Chilcote, Marc-Antoine Martinod, K. Miller, Frans Snik, Jun Hashimoto, Steven P. Bos, Jun Nishikawa, Hajime Kawahara, Alex B. Walter, Benjamin A. Mazin, Masayuki Kuzuhara, Tyler D. Groff, Mamadou N'Diaye, Elsa Huby, Kristina K. Davis, M. Hayashi, Neelay Fruitwala, Joseph Louis LAGRANGE (LAGRANGE), Université Côte d'Azur (UCA)-Université Nice Sophia Antipolis (... - 2019) (UNS), COMUE Université Côte d'Azur (2015-2019) (COMUE UCA)-COMUE Université Côte d'Azur (2015-2019) (COMUE UCA)-Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, COMUE Université Côte d'Azur (2015-2019) (COMUE UCA)-Université Côte d'Azur (UCA)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur (OCA), Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Schreiber, L., Schmidt, D., Vernet, E., Schreiber, Laura, Schmidt, Dirk, and Vernet, Elise
- Subjects
Wavefront ,[PHYS]Physics [physics] ,Computer science ,Segmented mirror ,business.industry ,01 natural sciences ,Exoplanet ,Starlight ,010309 optics ,Real-time Control System ,[SDU]Sciences of the Universe [physics] ,0103 physical sciences ,Subaru Telescope ,Adaptive optics ,business ,Thirty Meter Telescope ,Computer hardware ,ComputingMilieux_MISCELLANEOUS - Abstract
The Subaru Coronagraphic Extreme Adaptive Optics (SCExAO) instrument is a high-contrast imaging system installed at the 8-m Subaru Telescope on Maunakea, Hawaii. Due to its unique evolving design, SCExAO is both an instrument open for use by the international scientific community, and a testbed validating new technologies, which are critical to future high-contrast imagers on Giant Segmented Mirror Telescopes (GSMTs). Through multiple international collaborations over the years, SCExAO was able to test the most advanced technologies in wavefront sensors, real-time control with GPUs, low-noise high frame rate detectors in the visible and infrared, starlight suppression techniques or photonics technologies. Tools and interfaces were put in place to encourage collaborators to implement their own hardware and algorithms, and test them on-site or remotely, in laboratory conditions or on-sky. We are now commissioning broadband coronagraphs, the Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detector (MKID) Exoplanet Camera (MEC) for high-speed speckle control, as well as a C-RED ONE camera for both polarization differential imaging and IR wavefront sensing. New wavefront control algorithms are also being tested, such as predictive control, multi-camera machine learning sensor fusion, and focal plane wavefront control. We present the status of the SCExAO instrument, with an emphasis on current collaborations and recent technology demonstrations. We also describe upgrades planned for the next few years, which will evolve SCExAO —and the whole suite of instruments on the IR Nasmyth platform of the Subaru Telescope— to become a system-level demonstrator of the Planetary Systems Imager (PSI), the high-contrast instrument for the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT).
- Published
- 2020