Digging a dark hole in GRAVITY: towards Jupiter-like observations at the astronomical unit scale

Nicolas Pourré; Jean-Baptiste Le Bouquin; Julien Woillez; Alexis Carlotti; Lucie Leboulleux; Karine Perraut; Sylvestre Lacour

doi:10.1117/12.2629823

26 August 2022 Digging a dark hole in GRAVITY: towards Jupiter-like observations at the astronomical unit scale

Nicolas Pourré, Jean-Baptiste Le Bouquin, Julien Woillez, Alexis Carlotti, Lucie Leboulleux, Karine Perraut, Sylvestre Lacour

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 12183, Optical and Infrared Interferometry and Imaging VIII; 121830V (2022) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2629823
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2022, Montréal, Québec, Canada

Abstract

Since 2019, GRAVITY has obtained unprecedented direct observations of exoplanets at high contrasts (down to 5 × 10⁻⁵) and small angular separations from the host star (down to 110 mas). To access deeper contrast (10⁻⁶) at smaller angular separations (less than 100 mas), we propose to dig a dark hole at the planet position. It relies on wavefront control using the adaptive optics deformable mirror to minimize the stellar flux injected in the GRAVITY interferometric combiner. We tested this technique on-sky on the instrument and concluded that the maximal contrast improvement it can achieve is ×4 on the current adaptive optics (NAOMI, MACAO). We also predict that the dark hole technique will bring a contrast improvement up to ×100 at less than 140 mas on the future GRAVITY+ adaptive optics of the Unit Telescopes.

Conference Presentation

Citation Download Citation

Nicolas Pourré, Jean-Baptiste Le Bouquin, Julien Woillez, Alexis Carlotti, Lucie Leboulleux, Karine Perraut, and Sylvestre Lacour "Digging a dark hole in GRAVITY: towards Jupiter-like observations at the astronomical unit scale", Proc. SPIE 12183, Optical and Infrared Interferometry and Imaging VIII, 121830V (26 August 2022); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2629823

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