iLocater: Breaking the 1ms-1 RV precision barrier
Abstract
Existing radial velocity (RV) instruments for planet detection are limited by systematic errors that result from their seeing-limited design. iLocater, the world's first diffraction-limited RV instrument, will be installed at the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona and utilize a high resolution (R~160,000) spectrograph to search for Earth-like planets orbiting the nearest stars. iLocater will use the "extreme" adaptive optics (AO) system of the LBT to reduce spatial variations of light caused by atmospheric turbulence. This corrected light will be coupled into single-mode fibers to overcome modal-noise before being fed into an ultra-stable cryogenic Y- and J-band spectrograph, optimized for detecting terrestrial planets around late-type(KM) stars. It is expected that instrument commissioning will coincide with the beginning of science operations for TESS. In this poster, we present an update on our overall project including acquisition camera and spectrograph designs.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #227
- Pub Date:
- January 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016AAS...22714613B