Published September 17, 2024 | Version Published
Book Section - Chapter

Characterizing exoplanet atmospheres with SCALES medium-spectral-resolution angular/spectral differential imaging

  • 1. ROR icon University of California, Irvine
  • 2. ROR icon Indian Institute of Astrophysics
  • 3. ROR icon University of California, Santa Cruz
  • 4. ROR icon National Aeronautics and Space Administration
  • 5. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 6. ROR icon University of California, Santa Barbara
  • 7. ROR icon University of California, Berkeley
  • 8. ROR icon University of Arizona
  • 9. ROR icon Northwestern University
  • 10. ROR icon Okayama University of Science
  • 11. ROR icon University of Hawaii at Manoa
  • 12. ROR icon The University of Texas at Austin
  • 13. ROR icon University of Chicago
  • 14. ROR icon United States Naval Research Laboratory
  • 15. ROR icon University of Virginia

Abstract

SCALES (Slicer Combined with Array of Lenslets for Exoplanet Spectroscopy) is a high-contrast lenslet-based integral field spectrograph (IFS) designed to characterize exoplanet atmospheres in the 2 - 5 micron wavelength range. The SCALES medium-resolution mode provides the ability to characterize exoplanets at increased spectral resolution via the use of a lenslet subarray with a 0.34 x 0.36 arcsecond field of view and an image slicer. We use the SCALES simulator scalessim to generate high-fidelity mock observations of planets in the mediumresolution mode that include realistic Keck adaptive optics performance, as well as other atmospheric and instrumental noise effects, to simulate planet detections, and then employ angular differential imaging to extract the planet spectra. Analyzing the recovered spectra from these simulations allows us to quantify the effects of systematic noise sources on planet characterization, in particular residual speckle noise following angular differential data processing. We use these simulated recovered spectra to explore SCALES' ability to constrain molecular abundances and disequilibrium chemistry in giant exoplanet atmospheres.

Copyright and License

© 2024 SPIE.

Acknowledgement

We are grateful to the Heising-Simons Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Mt. Cuba Astronomical
Foundation for their generous support of our efforts. This project also benefited from work conducted under
the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program. S.S. is supported by the National Science Foundation under
MRI Grant No. 2216481. R.A.M is supported by the National Science Foundation MPS-Ascend Postdoctoral
Research Fellowship under Grant No. 2213312.

Additional details

Funding

Heising-Simons Foundation
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
Mt. Cuba Astronomical Foundation
National Science Foundation
NSF Graduate Research Fellowship -
National Science Foundation
AST-2216481
National Science Foundation
2213312

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