Pre-shipment Optical Characterization Of The SCALES Instrument

[astro-ph.IM] The Slicer Combined with an Array of Lenslets for Exoplanet Spectroscopy (SCALES) instrument is a 1-5 micron imager and 2-5 micron integral field spectrograph, currently being commissioned on the Keck II Telescope.

SCALES is optimized for exoplanet high-contrast imaging and spectroscopic characterization, and will be sensitive to older, colder exoplanets than existing instrumentation.

The 12.3″ x 12.3″ imaging channel is designed to replicate the capabilities of NIRC2, and the low (R35-200, 2.2″ x 2.2″ FOV) and medium (R2500-5000, 0.36″ x 0.34″ FOV) spectral resolution modes offer new capabilities compared to existing Keck instrumentation.

We present preliminary optical performance results from laboratory testing and commissioning of SCALES.

Isabel J. Kain, Reni Kupke, Daren Dillon, R. Deno Stelter, Rosalie McGurk, Gwendolin Weber-Stover, Athira Unni, Marc Kassis, Scott Lilley, Peyton Benac, Mackenzie Lach, Arun Surya, Amirul Hasan, Ravinder Banyal, Raquel Martinez, Nicholas MacDonald, Will Deich, Aaron Hunter, Emily Plume, Michael Gonzales, Cristian Rodriguez, Arjun Kumar, Cyril Bourgenot, Paul Whiteg, Juergen Schmollg, James Wells, Spencer Davies, David Bramall, Dimitri Mawet, Olivier Absil, Michael Fitzgerald, Eric Wang, Steph Sallum, Andrew Skemer

Subjects: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM); Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:2608.28918 [astro-ph.IM] (or arXiv:2608.28918v1 [astro-ph.IM] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.28918
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Journal reference: Proc. SPIE 14149, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy XI, 1414955 (21 Aug 2026)
Related DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1117/12.3105824
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Submission history
From: Isabel Kain
[v1] Fri, 28 Aug 2026 22:33:18 UTC (13,294 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.28918

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