New Exoplanet Surveys in the Canadian High Arctic at 80 Degrees North

• Main Authors: Law, Nicholas M., Sivanandam, Suresh, Murowinski, Richard, Carlberg, Raymond, Ngan, Wayne, Salbi, Pegah, Ahmadi, Aida, Steinbring, Eric, Halman, Mark, Graham, James
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: arXiv 2012
• Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics astro-ph.EP; Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics astro-ph.IM; FOS Physical sciences; Arctic; Ellesmere Island; Eureka
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1208.5769; https://arxiv.org/abs/1208.5769

Observations from near the Eureka station on Ellesmere Island, in the Canadian High Arctic at 80 degrees North, benefit from 24-hour darkness combined with dark skies and long cloud-free periods during the winter. Our first astronomical surveys conducted at the site are aimed at transiting exoplanets; compared to mid-latitude sites, the continuous darkness during the Arctic winter greatly improves the survey's detection efficiency for longer-period transiting planets. We detail the design, construction, and testing of the first two instruments: a robotic telescope, and a set of very wide-field imaging cameras. The 0.5m Dunlap Institute Arctic Telescope has a 0.8-square-degree field of view and is designed to search for potentially habitable exoplanets around low-mass stars. The very wide field cameras have several-hundred-square-degree fields of view pointed at Polaris, are designed to search for transiting planets around bright stars, and were tested at the site in February 2012. Finally, we present a conceptual design for the Compound Arctic Telescope Survey (CATS), a multiplexed transient and transit search system which can produce a 10,000-square-degree snapshot image every few minutes throughout the Arctic winter. : 11 pages, 6 figures, SPIE vol 8444, 2012