Reference star differential imaging of close-in companions and circumstellar disks with the NIRC2 vortex coronagraph at W.M. Keck Observatory [IMA]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1901.04090


Reference star differential imaging (RDI) is a powerful strategy for high contrast imaging. Using example observations taken with the vortex coronagraph mode of Keck/NIRC2 in $L^\prime$ band, we demonstrate that RDI provides improved sensitivity to point sources at small angular separations compared to angular differential imaging (ADI). Applying RDI to images of the low-mass stellar companions HIP~79124~C (192~mas separation, $\Delta L^\prime$=4.01) and HIP~78233~B (141~mas separation, $\Delta L^\prime$=4.78), the latter a first imaging detection, increases the significance of their detections by up to a factor of 5 with respect to ADI. We compare methods for reference frames selection and find that pre-selection of frames improves detection significance of point sources by up to a factor of 3. In addition, we use observations of the circumstellar disks around MWC~758 and 2MASS~J16042165-2130284 to show that RDI allows for accurate mapping of scattered light distributions without self-subtraction artifacts.

Read this paper on arXiv…

G. Ruane, H. Ngo, D. Mawet, et. al.
Tue, 15 Jan 19
71/83

Comments: To appear in The Astronomical Journal