Ashley Baker (Caltech): "New Instrumentation and Improved Telluric Correction for Exoplanet Characterization Studies"

Title: New Instrumentation and Improved Telluric Correction for Exoplanet Characterization Studies

Abstract: To achieve the goal of characterizing the masses of rocky planets, future high precision radial velocity (RV) instruments such as the Keck Planet Finder (KPF) will be challenged by stellar activity induced RV errors and must also address telluric modeling errors. In this talk I will describe the design and development of a stellar activity monitoring UV spectrograph that will observe simultaneously with KPF to provide S_HK measurements from the canonical Ca II H&K lines. I will then discuss ongoing work to improve the line lists of water vapor transitions using high fidelity solar spectra and discuss prospects for improved modeling of telluric lines in high resolution astronomical spectra and the relevance to RV measurements. Finally, I will briefly discuss a new multiband imager concept for characterizing the atmospheres of transiting hot Jupiters at medium resolution and present its expected capabilities as well as future plans for the project.