2015-2016

June 26, 2016

June 26th, 2016: The Robo-AO team is at the SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation in Edinburgh, Scottland with 4 talks and 2 posters that used Robo-AO data or technology:

C. Baranec	The Rapid Transient Surveyor
D. Atkinson	Next-generation performance of SAPHIRA HgCdTe APDs
C. Ziegler	SRAO: optical design and the dual-knife-edge WFS
N. Law	SRAO: the southern robotic speckle + adaptive optics system
C. Ziegler	The Robo-AO KOI survey: laser adaptive optics imaging of every Kepler exoplanet candidate
M. Salama	Robo-AO Kitt Peak: status of the system and optimizing the sensitivity of a sub-electron readnoise IR camera to detect low-mass companions

April 21st, 2016 Robo-AO PI, Christoph Baranec, presented a talk on Robo-AO and the planned Rapid Transient Surveyor at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory / Steward Observatory Joint Colloquium Series.

March 9th, 2016 Robo-AO was found to be the second most scientifically productive laser adaptive optics system in 2015 (behind Keck). With the redeployment to Kitt Peak last year, and four papers currently under review, we’re optimistic this productivity will continue well into the future.

Histogram of refereed science publications from the world’s laser adaptive optics systems.

November 12th, 2015 The Robo-AO system has been installed at the 2.1-m telescope at Kitt Peak and we are in the middle of commissioning. For more frequent updates, please see our Robo-AO Facebook page.

The Robo-AO ultraviolet laser at the Kitt Peak 2.1-m telescope.

October 12th, 2015 It is official, Robo-AO will be re-deployed to the 2.1-m telescope at Kitt Peak, AZ. Read more about the move and the new science that will be enabled in releases from the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, Caltech and the University of Hawaii.

In preparation for the move to Kitt peak, team members Rebecca, Maissa and Christoph just completed the rework of the wavefront sensor to accomodate the 2.1-m telescope’s longer focal length.

August 11th, 2015 Robo-AO is at the XXIX IAU General Assembly in Honolulu.

Nick presenting our latest Robo-AO/Kepler survey results and Larissa and Christoph presenting posters.

July 13th, 2015 In the summer of 2014, we successfully tested using an infrared avalanche photodiode with the Robo-AO system as both a high-speed camera and tip-tilt sensor. The results of that effort have just been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal.

Simultaneous infrared and visible Robo-AO imaging of M15 while infrared tip-tilt guiding on a star near the center of the globular cluster.

June 10th, 2015 We are wrapping up our last Robo-AO observing run at Palomar Observatory in a few nights. The last five years have been fantastic at Palomar and we couldn’t have been successful without the support of such a dedicated and helpful observatory staff. Thank you all! We will soon be hard at work preparing for our next deployment – stay tuned for an announcement soon.

rao_team — The June 2015 observing team (during robotic operations): Becky, Larissa, Reed, Carl, Nick and Christoph.

March 4th, 2015 Robo-AO has discovered the second known case of a planet residing in a quadruple star system. The findings help researchers understand how multiple star systems can influence the development and fate of planets. Read more in NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory News and in an Institute for Astronomy press release.

This artist’s conception shows the 30 Ari system, which includes four stars and a planet. Robo-AO discovered the orange-red star in the upper left, bringing the total number of known stars in the system to four. The planet, a gas giant, orbits its primary star (yellow) in about a year’s time. Image copyright: Karen Teramura, UH IfA.

January 27th, 2015 Visible light adaptive optics imaging from the Robo-AO system helped in accurately determining the relative sizes of the five Earth-sized planets orbiting their ancient (11.2 billion years old) host star, Kepler-444. Read more in the news and the journal paper led by the University of Birmingham’s Dr. Tiago Campante.

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