MRI: Development of Project 1640: Direct Exoplanet Spectroscopy

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Astronomers have now found over 400 planets orbiting other stars. Virtually all of these exciting discoveries were made by indirect means, inferring the presence of a planet by the gravitational tug and pull it makes on its star. Only a handful of planets have actually been "seen" through astronomers' telescopes. But significant advances are being made in the field of adaptive optics, which corrects for the distortion of images introduced as light from the distant solar systems passes through the earth's atmosphere; and new capabilities to mask the star's light to help see the much fainter companions are also under development. Astronomers are hopeful that we will soon actually be able to identify planets and characterize their chemistry by direct observation of the planets while masking the light from the star. Dr. Ben Oppenheimer of the American Museum of Natural History is leading an effort to develop techniques and instrumentation that will work with advances in adaptive optics to make these observations possible. He will use the new adaptive optics system at the Palomar Observatory 200-inch Hale telescope to conduct his investigations. His work is supported by NSF's Major Research Instrumentation program through the Division of Astronomical Sciences.