The Habitable-zone Planet Finder: a stabilized fiber-fed NIR spectrograph for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope

Suvrath Mahadevan; Lawrence Ramsey; Chad Bender; Ryan Terrien; Jason T. Wright; Sam Halverson; Fred Hearty; Matt Nelson; Adam Burton; Stephen Redman; Steven Osterman; Scott Diddams; James Kasting; Michael Endl; Rohit Deshpande

doi:10.1117/12.926102

24 September 2012 The habitable-zone planet finder: a stabilized fiber-fed NIR spectrograph for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope

Suvrath Mahadevan, Lawrence Ramsey, Chad Bender, Ryan Terrien, Jason T. Wright, Sam Halverson, Fred Hearty, Matt Nelson, Adam Burton, Stephen Redman, Steven Osterman, Scott Diddams, James Kasting, Michael Endl, Rohit Deshpande

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 8446, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy IV; 84461S (2012) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.926102
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2012, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Abstract

We present the scientific motivation and conceptual design for the recently funded Habitable-zone Planet Finder (HPF), a stabilized fiber-fed near-infrared (NIR) spectrograph for the 10 meter class Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) that will be capable of discovering low mass planets around M dwarfs. The HPF will cover the NIR Y and J bands to enable precise radial velocities to be obtained on mid M dwarfs, and enable the detection of low mass planets around these stars. The conceptual design is comprised of a cryostat cooled to 200K, a dual fiber-feed with a science and calibration fiber, a gold coated mosaic echelle grating, and a Teledyne Hawaii-2RG (H2RG) *NIR detector with a 1.7μm cutoff. A uranium-neon hollow-cathode lamp is the baseline wavelength calibration source, and we are actively testing laser frequency combs to enable even higher radial velocity precision. We will present the overall instrument system design and integration with the HET, and discuss major system challenges, key choices, and ongoing research and development projects to mitigate risk. We also discuss the ongoing process of target selection for the HPF survey.

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Suvrath Mahadevan, Lawrence Ramsey, Chad Bender, Ryan Terrien, Jason T. Wright, Sam Halverson, Fred Hearty, Matt Nelson, Adam Burton, Stephen Redman, Steven Osterman, Scott Diddams, James Kasting, Michael Endl, and Rohit Deshpande "The habitable-zone planet finder: a stabilized fiber-fed NIR spectrograph for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope", Proc. SPIE 8446, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy IV, 84461S (24 September 2012); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.926102

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