Portable Adaptive Optics for exoplanet imaging

The portable adaptive optics (PAO) is a high-contrast instrument that is optimized for the direct imaging of exoplanets and sub-stellar companions. The PAO has a compact physical size, high flexibility and high performance. As a visiting instrument, PAO has been used for the imaging observation of exoplanets with current 3-4 meter class telescopes. In these observations, it has delivered a diffraction limited image in H band. Combined with our unique image rotation and subtraction (IRS) technique and the optimized IRS algorithm, our PAO has successfully recovered the known exoplanets of kappa And b, in recent observation at 3.5-meter ARC telescope at Apache Point Observatory. The observation contrast has reached 10E-5 at an angular distance of 1 arcsec. We have performed the associated astrometry and photometry analysis of the recovered kappa And b planet, which gives a project separation of 1.044 +/- 0.016 arcsec, a position angle of 53.5 +/- 0.5 degrees, and a mass of 10.15 (-1.255) (+2.19) MJup. It has fully demonstrated that our portable high-contrast imaging system can be used for the exoplanets direct imaging observation with middle-class telescopes.