Daily Image
16-11-2009
SPHERE-ZIMPOL first planet detected in the lab
| Submitter: | Johan Pragt |
| Description: | Last week the SPHERE-ZIMPOL team resolved a planet near it's star by means of differential polarimetry. The planet and star are artificial, created by a set of fibers, simulating 50 marcsec separation on the sky. Detection is by the SPHERE-ZIMPOL test-setup with engineering detector. In parallel, the optical bench of SPHERE-ZIMPOL is integrated in the clean-room and the full SPHERE-ZIMPOL instrument is expected to come together early December. The pictures were made with a short exposure and reduced contrast. Other runs with 10-4 contrast shows again a resolved planet. The pictures show resp.: - differential polarimetric image, - cross section of the diff. pol. image - intensity of one pol. image (no coronagraph). The next steps should evolve towards contrasts of 10-7 to 10-8 by using coronagraph and clever calibration and dither procedures. SPHERE is the ‘Planet Finder’ Instrument for the VLT called SPHERE is in MAIT phase. SPHERE-ZIMPOL is one of the three focal instruments of SPHERE. It is developed by a consortium of University of Amsterdam, University Utrecht, ETH Zürich and NOVA-ASTRON. SPHERE is a consortium with partners in FR, GE, CH, IT and NL. SPHERE-ZIMPOL is a high-precision imaging polarimeter working in the visual range. The ZIMPOL instrument principle is based on differential comparison of the two polarisation images by fast modulation with a FLC (Ferro-electric Liquid Crystal), a techniques also used in solar telescope instruments. - Testing at ASTRON during Q4 2009 to Q2 2010. - Integration into the SPHERE instrument in Grenoble in Q3 2010. - SPHERE first light on VLT in Q1 2011. http://www.eso.org/projects/aot/vltpf |
| Copyright: | Ronald Roelfsema |
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