We discuss observing strategy for the Near Infrared Coronagraphic Imager (NICI) on the 8-m Gemini South telescope. NICI combines a number of techniques to attenuate starlight and suppress superspeckles: 1) coronagraphic imaging, 2) dual channel imaging for Spectral Differential Imaging (SDI) and 3) operation in a fixed Cassegrain rotator mode for Angular Differential Imaging (ADI). NICI will be used both in service mode and for a dedicated 50 night planet search campaign. While all of these techniques have been used individually in large planet-finding surveys, this is the first time ADI and SDI will be used with a coronagraph in a large survey. Thus, novel observing strategies are necessary to conduct a viable planet search campaign.
@article{arxiv.0809.3020,
title = {Observing Strategies for the NICI Campaign to Directly Image Extrasolar Planets},
author = {Beth Biller and Etienne Artigau and Zahed Wahhaj and Markus Hartung and Michael Liu and Laird M. Close and Mark R. Chun and Christ Ftaclas and Douglas W. Toomey and Thomas Hayward},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0809.3020},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
12 pages, 10 figures, submitted to Proceedings of the SPIE