- Macintosh, Bruce;
- Graham, James R;
- Ingraham, Patrick;
- Konopacky, Quinn;
- Marois, Christian;
- Perrin, Marshall;
- Poyneer, Lisa;
- Bauman, Brian;
- Barman, Travis;
- Burrows, Adam;
- Cardwell, Andrew;
- Chilcote, Jeffrey;
- Rosa, Robert J De;
- Dillon, Daren;
- Doyon, Rene;
- Dunn, Jennifer;
- Erikson, Darren;
- Fitzgerald, Michael;
- Gavel, Donald;
- Goodsell, Stephen;
- Hartung, Markus;
- Hibon, Pascale;
- Kalas, Paul G;
- Larkin, James;
- Maire, Jerome;
- Marchis, Franck;
- Marley, Mark;
- McBride, James;
- Millar-Blanchaer, Max;
- Morzinski, Katie;
- Norton, Andew;
- Oppenheimer, BR;
- Palmer, Dave;
- Patience, Jennifer;
- Pueyo, Laurent;
- Rantakyro, Fredrik;
- Sadakuni, Naru;
- Saddlemyer, Leslie;
- Savransky, Dmitry;
- Serio, Andrew;
- Soummer, Remi;
- Sivaramakrishnan, Anand;
- Song, Inseok;
- Thomas, Sandrine;
- Wallace, J Kent;
- Wiktorowicz, Sloane;
- Wolff, Schuyler
The Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) is a dedicated facility for directly imaging
and spectroscopically characterizing extrasolar planets. It combines a very
high-order adaptive optics system, a diffraction-suppressing coronagraph, and
an integral field spectrograph with low spectral resolution but high spatial
resolution. Every aspect of GPI has been tuned for maximum sensitivity to faint
planets near bright stars. During first light observations, we achieved an
estimated H band Strehl ratio of 0.89 and a 5-sigma contrast of $10^6$ at 0.75
arcseconds and $10^5$ at 0.35 arcseconds. Observations of Beta Pictoris clearly
detect the planet, Beta Pictoris b, in a single 60-second exposure with minimal
post-processing. Beta Pictoris b is observed at a separation of $434 \pm 6$
milli-arcseconds and position angle $211.8 \pm 0.5$ deg. Fitting the Keplerian
orbit of Beta Pic b using the new position together with previous astrometry
gives a factor of three improvement in most parameters over previous solutions.
The planet orbits at a semi-major axis of $9.0^{+0.8}_{-0.4}$ AU near the 3:2
resonance with the previously-known 6 AU asteroidal belt and is aligned with
the inner warped disk. The observations give a 4% posterior probability of a
transit of the planet in late 2017.