Proceedings Article | 24 July 2014
Kai Zhang, Liang Wang, Haijiao Jiang, Yongtian Zhu, Yonghui Hou, Songxin Dai, Jin Tang, Zhen Tang, Yizhong Zeng, Yi Chen, Lei Wang, Zhongwen Hu
Proc. SPIE. 9147, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy V
KEYWORDS: Optical fibers, Telescopes, Spectrographs, Astronomy, Exoplanetary science, Interferometers, Exoplanets, Iodine cells, Spectral resolution, Astronomical imaging
Exoplanet detection, a highlight in the current astronomy, will be part of puzzle in astronomical and astrophysical future,
which contains dark energy, dark matter, early universe, black hole, galactic evolution and so on. At present, most of the
detected Exoplanets are confirmed through methods of radial velocity and transit. Guo shoujing Telescope well known
as LAMOST is an advanced multi-object spectral survey telescope equipped with 4000 fibers and 16 low resolution fiber
spectrographs. To explore its potential in different astronomical activities, a new radial velocity method named
Externally Dispersed Interferometry (EDI) is applied to serve Exoplanet detection through combining a fixed-delay
interferometer with the existing spectrograph in medium spectral resolution mode (R=5,000-10,000). This new
technology has an impressive feature to enhance radial velocity measuring accuracy of the existing spectrograph through
installing a fixed-delay interferometer in front of spectrograph. This way produces an interference spectrum with higher
sensitivity to Doppler Effect by interference phase and fixed delay. This relative system named Multi-object Exoplanet
Search Spectral Interferometer (MESSI) is composed of a few parts, including a pair of multi-fiber coupling sockets, a
remote control iodine subsystem, a multi-object fixed delay interferometer and the existing spectrograph. It covers from
500 to 550 nm and simultaneously observes up to 21 stars. Even if it’s an experimental instrument at present, it’s still
well demonstrated in paper that how MESSI does explore an effective way to build its own system under the existing
condition of LAMOST and get its expected performance for multi-object Exoplanet detection, especially instrument
stability and its special data reduction. As a result of test at lab, inside temperature of its instrumental chamber is stable
in a range of ±0.5degree Celsius within 12 hours, and the direct instrumental stability without further observation
correction is equivalent to be ±50m/s every 20mins.
