Quantifying the Effect of Coronagraphs on Planet Photometry with the James Webb Space Telescope
Abstract
The launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in 2021 will revolutionize exoplanetary science by providing detailed characterizations of exoplanets within the infrared range of 3-13 microns. This is of particular interest to the field of direct imaging, where empirical models that remove excess starlight from imaged extrasolar systems have proven vital to the discovery of exoplanets. pyKLIP is one of the most modern python libraries with such capabilities, allowing its users to reveal exoplanets hidden behind the starlight. However, the pyKLIP algorithms are not presently able to handle coronagraph usage with the incoming JWST data. In preparation for the launch of this telescope, we upgraded pyKLIPs ability to correct for a coronagraph's effect on the throughput of off-axis sources when determining photometry. Given the coronagraph's transmission profile, pyKLIP v2.2 is now able to successfully account for each of NIRCam's five coronagraphs.
- Publication:
-
Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society
- Pub Date:
- December 2020
- DOI:
- 10.3847/2515-5172/abd1d4
- Bibcode:
- 2020RNAAS...4..227A
- Keywords:
-
- Coronagraphic imaging;
- Direct imaging;
- 313;
- 387