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Weighing Exo-Atmospheres: A novel mid-resolution spectral mode for SCALES

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics 2022-08-25 v1

Abstract

SCALES (Slicer Combined with an Array of Lenslets for Exoplanet Spectroscopy) is a 2 to 5 micron high-contrast lenslet-based Integral Field Spectrograph (IFS) designed to characterize exoplanets and their atmospheres. Like other lenslet-based IFSs, SCALES produces a short micro-spectrum of each lenslet's micro-pupil. We have developed an image slicer that sits behind the lenslet array and dissects and rearranges a subset of micro-pupils into a pseudo-slit. The combination lenslet array and slicer (or slenslit) allows SCALES to produce much longer spectra, thereby increasing the spectra resolution by over an order of magnitude and allowing for comparisons to atmospheric modeling at unprecedented resolution. This proceeding describes the design and performance of the slenslit.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2208.11209,
  title  = {Weighing Exo-Atmospheres: A novel mid-resolution spectral mode for SCALES},
  author = {Deno Stelter and Andrew J. Skemer and Renate Kupke and Cyril Bourgenot and Raquel A. Martinez and Stephanie E. Sallum},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2208.11209},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

14 pages, 12 figures, 5 tables. Published in SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation 2022 Proceedings, Volume 12184 Paper 154