Jared R. Males

Accreting protoplanets in the LkCa 15 transition disk

Exoplanet detections have revolutionized astronomy, offering new insights into solar system architecture and planet demographics. While nearly 1,900 exoplanets have now been discovered and confirmed, none are still in the process of formation. Transition disks, protoplanetary disks with inner clearings best explained by the influence of accreting planets, are natural laboratories for the study of planet formation. Some transition disks show evidence for the presence of young planets in the form of disk asymmetries or infrared sources detected within their clearings, as in the case of LkCa 15 (refs 8, 9). Attempts to observe directly signatures of accretion onto protoplanets have hitherto proven unsuccessful. Here we report adaptive optics observations of LkCa 15 that probe within the disk clearing. With accurate source positions over multiple epochs spanning 2009–2015, we infer the presence of multiple companions on Keplerian orbits. We directly detect Hα emission from the innermost companion, LkCa 15 b, evincing hot (about 10,000 kelvin) gas falling deep into the potential well of an accreting protoplanet.

The Subaru Coronagraphic Extreme Adaptive Optics System: Enabling High-Contrast Imaging on Solar-System Scales

The Subaru Coronagraphic Extreme Adaptive Optics (SCExAO) instrument is a multipurpose high-contrast imaging platform designed for the discovery and detailed characterization of exoplanetary systems and serves as a testbed for high-contrast imaging technologies for ELTs. It is a multi-band instrument which makes use of light from 600 to 2500nm allowing for coronagraphic direct exoplanet imaging of the inner 3 lambda/D from the stellar host. Wavefront sensing and control are key to the operation of SCExAO. A partial correction of low-order modes is provided by Subarus facility adaptive optics system with the final correction, including high-order modes, implemented downstream by a combination of a visible pyramid wavefront sensor and a 2000-element deformable mirror. The well corrected NIR (y-K bands) wavefronts can then be injected into any of the available coronagraphs, including but not limited to the phase induced amplitude apodization and the vector vortex coronagraphs, both of which offer an inner working angle as low as 1 lambda/D. Non-common path, low-order aberrations are sensed with a coronagraphic low-order wavefront sensor in the infrared (IR). Low noise, high frame rate, NIR detectors allow for active speckle nulling and coherent differential imaging, while the HAWAII 2RG detector in the HiCIAO imager and/or the CHARIS integral field spectrograph (from mid 2016) can take deeper exposures and/or perform angular, spectral and polarimetric differential imaging. Science in the visible is provided by two interferometric modules: VAMPIRES and FIRST, which enable sub-diffraction limited imaging in the visible region with polarimetric and spectroscopic capabilities respectively. We describe the instrument in detail and present preliminary results both on-sky and in the laboratory.

MAGELLAN ADAPTIVE OPTICS FIRST-LIGHT OBSERVATIONS of the EXOPLANET β PIC b. II. 3-5 μm DIRECT IMAGING with MagAO+Clio, and the EMPIRICAL BOLOMETRIC LUMINOSITY of A SELF-LUMINOUS GIANT PLANET

We thank the Magellan and Las Campanas Observatory staff for making this well-engineered, smoothly operated telescope and site possible. We would especially like to thank Povilas Palunas for help over the entire MagAO commissioning run. Juan Gallardo, Patricio Jones, Emilio Cerda, Felipe Sanchez, Gabriel Martin, Maurico Navarrete, Jorge Bravo, Victor Merino, Patricio Pinto, Gabriel Prieto, Mauricio Martinez, Alberto Pasten, Jorge Araya, Hugo Rivera, and the whole team of technical experts helped perform many exacting tasks in a very professional manner. Glenn Eychaner, David Osip, and Frank Perez all gave expert support which was fantastic. The entire logistics, dining, housekeeping, and hospitality staff provide for an excellent, healthy environment that ensured the wellness of our team throughout the commissioning runs. It is a privilege to be able to commission an AO system with such a fine staff and site. The MagAO system was developed with support from the NSF, MRI and TSIP programs. The VisAO camera was developed with help from the NSF ATI program. K.M.M. and J.R.M. were supported under contract with the California Institute of Technology, funded by NASA through the Sagan Fellowship Program. J.R.M. is grateful for the generous support of the Phoenix ARCS Foundation. L.M.C.s and Y.-L.W.s research were supported by NSF AAG and NASA Origins of Solar Systems grants. V.B. was supported in part by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (DGE-1143953). We thank the anonymous referee for a careful, timely review that significantly improved the manuscript. Facility: Magellan:Clay (MagAO+Clio) .

The LEECH Exoplanet Imaging Survey. Further constraints on the planet architecture of the HR 8799 system

© ESO, 2015. Context. Astrometric monitoring of directly imaged exoplanets allows the study of their orbital parameters and system architectures. Because most directly imaged planets have long orbital periods (>20 AU), accurate astrometry is challenging when based on data acquired on timescales of a few years and usually with different instruments. The LMIRCam camera on the Large Binocular Telescope is being used for the LBT Exozodi Exoplanet Common Hunt (LEECH) survey to search for and characterize young and adolescent exoplanets in L′ band (3.8 μm), including their system architectures. Aims. We first aim to provide a good astrometric calibration of LMIRCam. Then, we derive new astrometry, test the predictions of the orbital model of 8:4:2:1 mean motion resonance proposed for the system, and perform new orbital fitting of the HR 8799 bcde planets. We also present deep limits on a putative fifth planet inside the known planets. Methods. We use observations of HR 8799 and the Θ1 Ori C field obtained during the same run in October 2013. Results. We first characterize the distortion of LMIRCam. We determine a platescale and a true north orientation for the images of 10.707±0.012 mas/pix and -0.430±0.076°, respectively. The errors on the platescale and true north orientation translate into astrometric accuracies at a separation of 1′′ of 1.1 mas and 1.3 mas, respectively. The measurements for all planets agree within 3σ with a predicted ephemeris. The orbital fitting based on the new astrometric measurements favors an architecture for the planetary system based on 8:4:2:1 mean motion resonance. The detection limits allow us to exclude a fifth planet slightly brighter or more massive than HR 8799 b at the location of the 2:1 resonance with HR 8799 e (∼9.5 AU) and about twice as bright as HR 8799 cde at the location of the 3:1 resonance with HR 8799 e (∼7.5 AU).

The Gemini NICI planet-finding campaign: The orbit of the young exoplanet β pictoris b

We present new astrometry for the young (12-21 Myr) exoplanet beta Pictoris b taken with the Gemini/NICI and Magellan/MagAO instruments between 2009 and 2012. The high dynamic range of our observations allows us to measure the relative position of beta Pic b with respect to its primary star with greater accuracy than previous observations. Based on a Markov Chain Monte Carlo analysis, we find the planet has an orbital semi-major axis of 9.1 (+ 5.3 / - 0.5) AU and orbital eccentricity less than 0.15 at 68% confidence (with 95% confidence intervals of 8.2 - 48 AU and 0.00 - 0.82 for semi-major axis and eccentricity, respectively, due to a long narrow degenerate tail between the two). We find that the planet has reached its maximum projected elongation, enabling higher precision determination of the orbital parameters than previously possible, and that the planets projected separation is currently decreasing. With unsaturated data of the entire beta Pic system (primary star, planet, and disk) obtained thanks to NICIs semitransparent focal plane mask, we are able to tightly constrain the relative orientation of the circumstellar components. We find the orbital plane of the planet lies between the inner and outer disks: the position angle (P.A.) of nodes for the planets orbit (211.8 +/- 0.3 deg) is 7.4 sigma greater than the P.A. of the spine of the outer disk and 3.2 sigma less than the warped inner disk P.A., indicating the disk is not collisionally relaxed. Finally, for the first time we are able to dynamically constrain the mass of the primary star beta Pic to 1.76 (+0.18 / -0.27) solar mass.

ON THE MORPHOLOGY AND CHEMICAL COMPOSITION OF THE HR 4796A DEBRIS DISK

[abridged] We present resolved images of the HR 4796A debris disk using the Magellan adaptive optics system paired with Clio-2 and VisAO. We detect the disk at 0.77 \microns, 0.91 \microns, 0.99 \microns, 2.15 \microns, 3.1 \microns, 3.3 \microns, and 3.8 \microns. We find that the deprojected center of the ring is offset from the star by 4.76

The LEECH Exoplanet Imaging Survey: Characterization of the Coldest Directly Imaged Exoplanet, GJ 504 b, and Evidence for Superstellar Metallicity

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MagAO: Status and on-sky performance of the Magellan adaptive optics system

1.6 AU and that the deprojected eccentricity is 0.06

ON-SKY PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF THE VECTOR APODIZING PHASE PLATE CORONAGRAPH ON MagAO/Clio2

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Follow-up Observations of the Neptune Mass Transiting Extrasolar Planet HAT-P-11b

0.02, in general agreement with previous studies. We find that the average width of the ring is 14