We have designed and tested an in-plane echelle spectrograph configured to investigate precision radial velocities from ground-based near-infrared observations. The spectrograph operates across the spectral range of 0.9-1.7 mm at a spectral resolution of R = 50,000, and uses a liquid nitrogen-cooled HAWAII 1K detector. Repeated measurements of the Earth's rotation via integrated Sunlight with two different instrument arrangements in the near infrared Y band have produced radial velocities with ~10 m/s RMS over a period of several hours. The most recent instrument configuration has achieved an unbinned RMS of 7 m/s and suggests that infrared radial velocity precisions may be able to approach those achieved at optical wavelengths.
@article{arxiv.0806.3749,
title = {A Pathfinder Instrument for Precision Radial Velocities in the Near-Infrared},
author = {L. W. Ramsey and J. Barnes and S. L. Redman and H. R. A. Jones and A. Wolszczan and S. Bongiorno and L. Engel and J. Jenkins},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0806.3749},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
18 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in PASP