GeminiFocus January 2014 | Page 10

Bruce Macintosh and Peter Michaud Figure 1. Gemini Planet Imager’s first light image of Beta Pictoris b, a planet orbiting the star Beta Pictoris. The star, Beta Pictoris, is blocked in this image by a mask so its light doesn’t interfere with the light of the planet. In addition to the image, GPI obtains a spectrum from every pixel element in the fieldof-view to allow scientists to study the planet in great detail. Beta Pictoris b is a giant planet — several times larger than Jupiter — and is approximately 10 million years old. These near-infrared images (1.5-1.8 microns) show the planet glowing in infrared light from the heat released in its formation. Processing by Christian Marois, NRC Canada. World’s Most Powerful Planet Finder Turns its Eye to the Sky: First Light with the Gemini Planet Imager The following article is an adaptation of the news featured in a press conference at the January 2014 meeting of the American Astronomical Society. After nearly a decade of development, construction, and testing, the world’s most advanced instrument for directly imaging and analyzing planets around other stars is pointing skyward and collecting light from distant worlds. The instrument, called the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI), was designed, built, and optimized for imaging faint planets next to bright stars and probing their atmospheres. It will also be a powerful tool for studying dusty, planet-forming disks around young stars. It is the most advanced such instrument to be deployed on one of the world’s biggest telescopes — the 8-meter Gemini South telescope in Chile. “Even these early first light images are almost a factor of 10 better than the previous generation of instruments. In one minute, we are seeing planets that used to take us an hour to detect,” says Bruce Macintosh of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who led the team that built the instrument. GPI detects infrared (heat) radiation from young Jupiter-like planets in wide orbits around other stars, those equivalent to the giant planets in our own Solar System not long after their formation. Every planet GPI sees can be studied in detail. 8 GeminiFocus January2014