[Baps] [Fwd: [Announce] Thursday 4/19 Bruce MacIntosh / LLNL]

[Paul Withers]

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: [Announce] Thursday 4/19 Bruce MacIntosh / LLNL
From:    "Rochette, Amanda E" <rochette at bu.edu>
Date:    Wed, April 11, 2012 9:30 am
To:      "Csp_seminar at bu-ast.bu.edu" <Csp_seminar at bu-ast.bu.edu>
         "announce at skynet.bu.edu" <announce at skynet.bu.edu>
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Speaker: Bruce MacIntosh

Affiliation: LLNL

Title: Direct imaging of extrasolar planets

Date: Thursday, April 19, 2012

Time: 3:30 PM Refreshments in CAS 500, 4:00 PM Talk
Place: 725 Commonwealth Ave. CAS 502

Abstract:

Over the past 15 years, more than 700 extrasolar planets have been
detected. Almost all known extrasolar planets have been discovered
indirectly - through their gravitational perturbation or their transits of
their parent star. I will briefly review these discoveries and their
implications for our understanding of planetary formation. Although these
indirect techniques are powerful, they are also restricted to a limited
range of orbital phase space, and in most cases provide no constraints on
the planet's properties beyond mass or radius. Direct detection -
separating the light of the planet from the parent star - opens up new
areas of exoplanet phase space and new avenues for planet
characterization. The power of this technique is shown in the image of
four giant planets orbiting the young star HR8799, and I will discuss the
spectroscopic characterization of the planets, numerical analysis of the
stability of the system, and the challenge it represents for theories of
planet formation.

The next major step in direct detection will be the Gemini Planet Imager
(GPI), a dedicated exoplanet instrument combining a 4096-actuator silicon
MEMS adaptive optics system, an apodized coronagraph to control
diffraction, and nanometer-precision wavefront sensing to achieve
sensitivity an order of magnitude beyond any current ground or space
facility. GPI is currently undergoing final integration and test and will
deploy in early 2012 on the Gemini South 8-m telescope. I will give an
overview of GPI's design and capabilities. Once GPI is operational, we
will use it to carry out the Gemini Planet Imager Exoplanet Survey
(GPIES), a 900-hour survey of 600 young stars in the solar neighborhood.
The GPIES survey has been optimized to to extend our knowledge of giant
planet populations from 5 to 50 AU and provide robust statistical
information to constrain planet-formation models.


Amanda Rochette
Proposal Development Administrator
Boston University
Center for Space Physics & Institute for Astrophysical Research
725 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 506, Boston, MA 02215
Tel: (617) 353-5992 Fax: (617) 353-6463

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