Stellar and Substellar Astrophysics with Extreme Adaptive Optics

Abstract

To date the majority of planets known to exist outside of our solar system (exoplanets) have been discovered indirectly, yet the direct detection of exoplanets is the future of exoplanet characterization. Searching for signs of life (biosignatures) on worlds beyond our solar system through the next generation of ground-based extremely large telescopes is one of the top priorities for the next decade of astronomy. Yet this is extremely challenging from a technological perspective in that planets are very close to their host stars and very faint, making it difficult to disentangle the faint planet signal from the star. The Extreme Wavefront Control Lab at Steward Observatory is developing technology and methodology for this challenging science through the MagAO-X instrument, an extreme high-contrast imaging instrument on the 6.5~m Magellan Clay Telescope and a pathfinder for the high contrast imager GMagAO-X which will be part of the upcoming 24.5~m Giant Magellan Telescope planned for the 2030s. In my PhD work at the University of Arizona I have employed the capabilities of MagAO-X, and it's predecessor MagAO, for stellar and substellar astrophysical research. In this work I will describe how we achieve high-contrast imaging with MagAO-X, a survey I analyzed using binary stars for data reduction, a survey I designed using the power of MagAO-X for exoplanet science through white dwarf stars in binaries, and simulation work I am conducting preparing for exoplanet detections through reflected light with MagAO-X and GMagAO-X.