Proxima Centauri

RISTRETTO: A VLT XAO Design To Reach Proxima Cen b In The Visible

By Keith Cowing
Status Report
astro-ph.IM
September 13, 2024
Filed under , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
RISTRETTO: A VLT XAO Design To Reach Proxima Cen b In The Visible
XAO+PIAAN simulation scheme. — astro-ph.IM

RISTRETTO is the evolution of the original idea of coupling the VLT instruments SPHERE and ESPRESSO lovis_2016a, aiming at High Dispersion Coronagraphy.

RISTRETTO is a visitor instrument that should enable the characterization of the atmospheres of nearby exoplanets in reflected light, by using the technique of high-contrast, high-resolution spectroscopy. Its goal is to observe Prox Cen b and other planets placed at about 35mas from their star, i.e. 2λ/D at λ=750nm. The instrument is composed of an extreme adaptive optics, a coronagraphic Integral Field Unit, and a diffraction-limited spectrograph (R=140.000, λ=620-840 nm).

We present the RISTRETTO XAO architecture that reach the specification, providing contrasts down to 5×10−5 at 2λ/D from the star in the visible, in the presence of atmosphere and low wind effect. This performance is allowed by a new two-sensors-one-dm architecture, some variations to the already known concepts of unmodulated pyWFS and zWFS, and exploiting to the maximum of their capabilities the state-of-the-art high speed, low noise cameras & fast DM.

We present the result of end-to-end simulations, that demonstrate stable closed loop operation of an unmodulated pyramid and a zernike WFS (together), and in presence of low wind effect.

N. Blind, M. Shinde, I. Dinis, N. Restori, B. Chazelas, T. Fusco, O. Guyon, J. Kuehn, C. Lovis, P. Martinez, M. Motte, J.-F. Sauvage, A. Spang

Comments: 13 pages, 12 figure, SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2024, Yokohama, Japan
Subjects: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM); Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:2409.08052 [astro-ph.IM] (or arXiv:2409.08052v1 [astro-ph.IM] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2409.08052
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Journal reference: Proceedings Volume 13097, Adaptive Optics Systems IX; 130976U (2024)
Related DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1117/12.3019992
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Submission history
From: Nicolas Blind
[v1] Thu, 12 Sep 2024 13:57:27 UTC (39,790 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.08052
Astrobiology,

Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻