IRFP: "Lucky Imaging": Acquiring the Highest Angular Resolutions in Optical Astronomy

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The International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct nine to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad.This award will support a twenty-four-month research fellowship by Dr. Mark Keremedjiev to work with Professor Craig Mackay at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.The ability to attain sharper, more detailed images is essential to unraveling the many mysteries of astrophysics and is one of the principle reasons why the Hubble Space Telescope has been so successful. Therefore, the development of instruments capable of producing data of similar or better quality from the ground presents an opportunity to make further revolutionary discoveries for a fraction of the cost. One particular technique that is already proven to achieve this goal is "Lucky Imaging" -- an astronomical technique that has achieved the highest angular resolutions ever recorded in optical astronomy. Lucky Imaging, however, is still in its infancy and its potential is only beginning to be realized. Dr. Keremedjiev is working with Professor Craig Mackay and the Cambridge Lucky Imaging group on two cutting edge variations of Lucky Imaging: Lucky+AO and Lucky Spectroscopy. Lucky+AO (a refinement of the technique that introduces adaptive optics to the system) has already been successfully demonstrated on a 5-meter class telescope and the team is working on dedicated versions for 8 and 10-meter class telescopes that will provide the highest resolution optical images ever recorded. They are also developing Lucky Spectroscopy where an integral field spectrograph is coupled to a Lucky Imaging system to acquire spectroscopic information as well as imaging information. In addition to the development of new techniques, Dr. Keremedjiev is also using the finished LuckyCam system with telescopes on the Canary Islands to conduct scientific research. He is observing the host-stars of candidate exoplanetary systems and producing better estimates of exoplanetary properties, constraining the formation processes of exoplanets and aiding the characterization of the Kepler Space Telescope. He is also working to determine if Lucky Spectroscopy will be capable of measuring the masses of Supermassive Black Holes (SMBH); if so, Lucky Spectroscopy will be able to measure the furthest and most massive SMBH yet observed through kinematic modeling.This project has several direct impacts on the broader astronomy community. The first is the enhancement of infrastructure and instrumentation development. By developing dedicated Lucky+AO and Lucky Spectroscopy systems, this award is vital to increasing access to the highest angular resolution data for all astronomers. Furthermore, the award enables Dr. Keremedjiev to learn the skills necessary to build new Lucky Imaging systems for deployment at American institutions such as the Gemini and the Kitt Peak National Observatories. This program also promotes training of future astronomers as several graduate students enrolled at the University of Cambridge work on the project. Finally, Lucky Imaging is able to produce extremely high-quality data for a fraction of the cost of space-based missions and contributes to making astronomical instrumentation more cost-effective.