The Achromatic Interfero Coronagraph (AIC) aims at observing faint structures in the environment of a star. Light from the star is rejected by means of destructive interference (nulling) thus allowing very close sensing at a level overshooting the telescope's diffraction limit. Initially devised for space based facilities, AIC can be efficient on ground based large telescope provided adaptive optics is available. A compact version of AIC has been built so as to install it at CFHT/Hawaii between the PUEO bonette and the KIR camera used in the K band. In this paper we report on the first observation run performed on June 99 with the compact AIC. The principle of AIC is briefly recalled and technical features of the compact AIC is described. Some images obtained are shown and close-sensing performance regarding detection of companions is evaluated. Expectable results on CFHT are outlined.
展开▼
