2018/08/01 by Jonas Kühn, Kuhn, Jonas, S. Daemgen +15
Physics and Astronomy · #Adaptive optics and wavefront sensing #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #FOS: Physical sciences #Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM) #Solar and Space Plasma Dynamics #Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR) #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1808.00585
openalex publication_date 2018/08/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
More than half of the stars in the solar neighborhood reside in\nbinary/multiple stellar systems, and recent studies suggest that gas giant\nplanets may be more abundant around binaries than single stars. Yet, these\nmultiple systems are usually overlooked or discarded in most direct imaging\nsurveys, as they prove difficult to image at high-contrast using coronographs.\nThis is particularly the case for compact binaries (less than 1" angular\nseparation) with similar stellar magnitudes, where no existing coronagraph can\nprovide high-contrast regime. Here we present preliminary results of an\non-going Palomar pilot survey searching for low-mass companions around ~15\nyoung challenging binary systems, with angular separation as close as 0".3 and\nnear-equal K-band magnitudes. We use the Stellar Double Coronagraph (SDC)\ninstrument on the 200-inch Telescope in a modified optical configuration,\nmaking it possible to align any targeted binary system behind two vector vortex\ncoronagraphs in cascade. This approach is uniquely possible at Palomar, thanks\nto the absence of sky rotation combined with the availability of an extreme AO\nsystem, and the number of intermediate focal-planes provided by the SDC\ninstrument. Finally, we expose our current data reduction strategy, and we\nattempt to quantify the exact contrast gain parameter space of our approach,\nbased on our latest observing runs.\n