CaltechAUTHORS
Published December 13, 2020 | Version Published
Book Section - Chapter Open

Status of the SCExAO instrument: recent technology upgrades and path to a system-level demonstrator for PSI

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon University of Hawaii at Hilo
  • 2. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 3. ROR icon University of Sydney
  • 4. ROR icon University of California, Santa Barbara
  • 5. ROR icon University of Tokyo
  • 6. ROR icon National Astronomical Observatory of Japan
  • 7. ROR icon Australian National University
  • 8. ROR icon Macquarie University
  • 9. ROR icon Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur
  • 10. ROR icon Goddard Space Flight Center
  • 11. ROR icon University of Notre Dame
  • 12. ROR icon Princeton University
  • 13. ROR icon University of Arizona
  • 14. ROR icon Leiden University
  • 15. ROR icon Jet Propulsion Lab
  • 16. ROR icon Ames Research Center
  • 17. ROR icon Hokkaido University

Contributors

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).

Additional Information

© 2020 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). The development of SCExAO was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (Grant-in-Aid for Research #23340051, #26220704, #23103002, #19H00703 & #19H00695), the Astrobiology Center of the National Institutes of Natural Sciences, Japan, the Mt Cuba Foundation and the director's contingency fund at Subaru Telescope. F. Martinache's work is supported by the ERC award CoG - 683029. The authors wish to recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Maunakea has always had within the indigenous Hawaiian community. We are most fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct observations from this mountain.

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Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
107297
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20210104-151206059

Funding

Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
23340051
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
26220704
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
23103002
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
19H00703
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
19H00695
National Institutes of Natural Sciences of Japan
Mt. Cuba Astronomical Foundation
Subaru Telescope
European Research Council (ERC)
683029

Dates

Created
2021-01-05
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2021-11-16
Created from EPrint's last_modified field

Caltech Custom Metadata

Series Name
Proceedings of SPIE
Series Volume or Issue Number
11448