Dani Atkinson

Observatory deployment and characterization of SAPHIRA HgCdTe APD arrays

We report the performance of Selex ES SAPHIRA APD arrays from both laboratory characterization and telescope deployment. The arrays are produced using the MOVPE production method, allowing for solid state engineering and thus produce superior performance to similar liquid phase epitaxy efforts. With an avalanche gain slightly over 50 and read noise of ~9e-, the detectors are easily capable of single-frame sub-electron read noise, and the 32 output readout and flexible windowing allow an excellent readout speed. Gain-corrected dark current/glow is found to be 10-20 e-/s at low bias, and drops below basline at high avalanche gains. The detectors were also tested on-sky at both IRTF on Maunakea and the 1.5-m telescope at Palomar Observatory, demonstrating that the SAPHIRA is an ideal device for both tip-tilt NGS guiding and infrared lucky imaging, in the latter providing diffraction-limited resolution for the 3-meter IRTF without the benefit of adaptive optics correction.

ROBO-AOKEPLERPLANETARY CANDIDATE SURVEY. II. ADAPTIVE OPTICS IMAGING OF 969KEPLEREXOPLANET CANDIDATE HOST STARS

We initiated the Robo-AO Kepler Planetary Candidate Survey in 2012 to observe each Kepler exoplanet candidate host star with high-angular-resolution visible-light laser-adaptive-optics imaging. Our goal is to find nearby stars lying in Keplers photometric apertures that are responsible for the relatively high probability of false-positive exoplanet detections and that cause underestimates of the size of transit radii. Our comprehensive survey will also shed light on the effects of stellar multiplicity on exoplanet properties and will identify rare exoplanetary architectures. In this second part of our ongoing survey, we observed an additional 969 Kepler planet candidate hosts and we report blended stellar companions up to

HIGH-SPEED IMAGING AND WAVEFRONT SENSING WITH AN INFRARED AVALANCHE PHOTODIODE ARRAY

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Next-generation performance of SAPHIRA HgCdTe APDs

that contribute to Keplers measured light curves. We found 203 companions within

Evolutionary timescales of AO-produced speckles at NIR wavelengths

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Magnetic inflation and stellar mass. I. Revised parameters for the component stars of the Kepler low-mass eclipsing binary T-Cyg1-12664

4 of 181 of the Kepler stars, of which 141 are new discoveries. We measure the nearby-star probability for this sample of Kepler planet candidate host stars to be 10.6%

Second generation Robo-AO instruments and systems

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Performance of the first HAWAII 4RG-15 arrays in the laboratory and at the telescope

1.1% at angular separations up to 2.5, significantly higher than the 7.4%

PROBABILITY OF THE PHYSICAL ASSOCIATION OF 104 BLENDED COMPANIONS TO KEPLER OBJECTS OF INTEREST USING VISIBLE AND NEAR-INFRARED ADAPTIVE OPTICS PHOTOMETRY

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The Robo-AO KOI survey: laser adaptive optics imaging of every Kepler exoplanet candidate

1.0% probability discovered in our initial sample of 715 stars; we find the probability increases to 17.6%