English

Klio: A 5 micron camera for the detection of giant exoplanets

Astrophysics 2009-11-10 v1

Abstract

We plan to take advantage of the unprecedented combination of low thermal background and high resolution provided by the 6.5m MMT's adaptive secondary mirror, to target the 3-5 micron atmospheric window where giant planets are expected to be anomalously bright. We are in the process of building a 3-5 micron coronograph that is predicted to be sensitive to planets as close as 0.4 arcsec to the parent star. We expect to be able to detect giant planets down to 5 times Jupiter's mass for a 1 Gyr old system at 10 pc. We plan to carry out a survey which is complementary to the radial velocity detections of planets and constructed to characterize the prevalence and distribution of giant planets around nearby, Sun-like stars.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0312552,
  title  = {Klio: A 5 micron camera for the detection of giant exoplanets},
  author = {Melanie Freed and Philip M. Hinz and Michael R. Meyer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0312552},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

4 pages, 2 figures, to appear in the AIP Conf Proc: "The Search for Other Worlds", eds. S. S. Holt & D. Deming