Apodized Pupil Lyot Coronagraphs for Arbitrary Apertures. IV. Reduced Inner Working Angle and Increased Robustness to Low-Order Aberrations

The Apodized Pupil Lyot Coronagraph (APLC) is a diffraction suppression system installed in the recently deployed instruments Palomar/P1640, Gemini/GPI, and VLT/SPHERE to allow direct imaging and spectroscopy of circumstellar environments. Using a prolate apodization, the current implementations offer raw contrasts down to $10^{-7}$ at 0.2 arcsec from a star over a wide bandpass (20%), in the presence of central obstruction and struts, enabling the study of young or massive gaseous planets. Observations of older or lighter companions at smaller separations would require improvements in terms of inner working angle (IWA) and contrast, but the methods originally used for these designs were not able to fully explore the parameter space. We here propose a novel approach to improve the APLC performance. Our method relies on the linear properties of the coronagraphic electric field with the apodization at any wavelength to develop numerical solutions producing coronagraphic star images with high-contrast region in broadband light. We explore the parameter space by considering different aperture geometries, contrast levels, dark-zone sizes, bandpasses, and focal plane mask sizes. We present an application of these solutions to the case of Gemini/GPI with a design delivering a $10^{-8}$ raw contrast at 0.19 arcsec and offering a significantly reduced sensitivity to low-order aberrations compared to the current implementation. Optimal solutions have also been found to reach $10^{-10}$ contrast in broadband light regardless of the telescope aperture shape (in particular the central obstruction size), with effective IWA in the $2-3.5lambda/D$ range, therefore making the APLC a suitable option for the future exoplanet direct imagers on the ground or in space.

James Webb Space Telescope Optical Simulation Testbed I: Overview and First Results

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Optical Simulation Testbed (JOST) is a tabletop workbench to study aspects of wavefront sensing and control for a segmented space telescope, including both commissioning and maintenance activities. JOST is complementary to existing optomechanical testbeds for JWST (e.g. the Ball Aerospace Testbed Telescope, TBT) given its compact scale and flexibility, ease of use, and colocation at the JWST Science & Operations Center. We have developed an optical design that reproduces the physics of JWSTs three-mirror anastigmat using three aspheric lenses; it provides similar image quality as JWST (80% Strehl ratio) over a field equivalent to a NIRCam module, but at HeNe wavelength. A segmented deformable mirror stands in for the segmented primary mirror and allows control of the 18 segments in piston, tip, and tilt, while the secondary can be controlled in tip, tilt and x, y, z position. This will be sufficient to model many commissioning activities, to investigate field dependence and multiple field point sensing & control, to evaluate alternate sensing algorithms, and develop contingency plans. Testbed data will also be usable for cross-checking of the WFS&C Software Subsystem, and for staff training and development during JWSTs five- to ten-year mission.

Orbital Motion of HR 8799 b,c, d using Hubble Space Telescope data from 1998: Constraints on Inclination, Eccentricity and Stability

HR 8799 is currently the only multiple-planet system that has been detected with direct imaging, with four giant planets orbiting at large separations from this young late A star. Orbital motion provides insight into the stability, and possible formation mechanisms of this planetary system. Dynamical studies can also provide constraints on the planets masses, which help calibrate evolutionary models. Yet, measuring the orbital motion is a very difficult task because the long-period orbits (50-500 yr) require long time baselines and high-precision astrometry. This paper studies the three planets HR 8799b, c and d in the archival data set of HR 8799 obtained with the HST NICMOS coronagraph in 1998. The detection of all three planets is made possible by a careful optimization of the LOCI algorithm. This work confirms previous astrometry for planet b, and presents new detections and astrometry for c and d. These HST images provide a ten-year baseline with the discovery images from 2008, and therefore offer a unique opportunity to constrain their orbital motion now. Recent dynamical studies of this system show the existence of a few possible stable solutions involving mean motion resonances, where the interaction between c and d plays a major role. We study the compatibility of a few of these stable scenarios (1d:1c, 1d:2c, or 1d:2c:4d) with the new astrometric data from HST. In the hypothesis of a 1d:2c:4b mean motion resonance our best orbit fit is close to the stable solution previously identified for a three-planet system, and involves low eccentricity for planet d (ed = 0.10) and moderate inclination of the system (i = 28.0 deg), assuming a coplanar system, circular orbits for b and c, and exact resonance with integer period ratios. Under these assumptions, we can place strong constraints on the inclination of the system (27.3 - 31.4 deg) and on the eccentricity for d ed < 0.46.