The L-band vortex coronagraph installed on VLT/NACO was used to follow up the discovery of a low-mass companion around a debris disk star, obtained in the context of the SHARDDS survey (PI: Julien Milli) carried out with the 2nd generation VLT/SPHERE high-contrast imager. The NACO data obtained thanks to the vortex coronagraph demonstrate that the faint point-like source is physically associated to the star HD206893, and provide a first estimation of the infrared colors of the companion, showing an unusually red color.

Original paper: Milli et al. 2016, A&A 597, L2

Full text available on arXiv.

The new paper describes the manufacturing of new L-band vortex coronagraph that achieve unprecedented performance in terms of on-axis rejection, up to 1000:1 (Vargas Catalan et al. 2016, A&A 595, A127). Some of these coronagraphs are already installed on the Keck and LBT.

Full text available on arXiv.

The first (invitation-only) international vortex workshop, co-organized by Caltech and the University of Liège, will be hosted at Caltech during the next three days (August 15-17). Full program available here. The talks will be posted on the same website shortly after the end of the workshop.

Most of the VORTEX team will be attending the 2016 SPIE Astronomical Telescopes & Instrumentation conference. Talks on recent VORTEX results are to be given by Olivier [9908-25], Elsa [9909-74], and Christian [9912-93]. Several posters will be on display about VORTEX-related activities.

We are happy to announce that the paper describing the LLSG post processing algorithm for high-contrast images has just been published in A&A (Gomez Gonzalez et al. 2016).

We have the pleasure to welcome Gilles Orban de Xivry in the VORTEX team at ULg. Gilles has obtained his PhD thesis at theMax-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik in 2014. He will be working on the integration of our ALPAO deformable mirror onto the VODCA coronagraphic test bench over the next 6 months.

The NIRC2 L-Band Vortex Coronagraph will be available for science in shared risk mode in 2016B. WMKO is working on official documentation for the new instrument capability (hopefully out by the end of the week), but given that the NASA proposal deadline is one week away on March 17, you may use the information in the September 2015 presentation given by Dimitri Mawet at Caltech.  Dimitri is the primary point of contact and users are encouraged to contact him prior to proposing. Once more documentation is available, it will be linked on the WMKO instruments page.

Complete proposal call information can be found here: http://nexsci.caltech.edu/missions/KeckSolicitation/

After two postdocs at Bonn and Tucson, Denis Defrère is back to Liège. He is joining the VORTEX team, to work on the scientific exploitation of the LBTI L-band AGPM, and on other vortex-related projects.

After 18 months, Olivier Wertz is leaving the VORTEX team to take up a new postdoc position in Bonn (but he will continue to collaborate with the VORTEX team during his spare time!).

Tonight is starting the science verification of the upgraded VISIR at VLT, including some observations with the new AGPM vortex coronagraphy mode. Let’s hope for good weather!