1. SCIENTIFIC OPPORTUNITIES OF AO-ASSISTED
MID-IR IMAGING: MAGELLAN?
Michael R. Meyer
Department of Astronomy
Bill Hoffmann, Jared Males, Phil Hinz
Alycia Weinberger
4th Magellan Science Symposium

2. Why AO-Assisted Mid-IR imaging in JWST Era?
AGPM Coronagraph + AO QPM on MIRI + JWST
l/D in contrast limit for targets N < 7 mag.
Further, if you can do it from the ground, you should!

3. What science areas would strongly benefit?
Multiple-image strong lenses at modest redshift.
Keck; Agol et al. (2010)

4. What science areas would strongly benefit?
AGN in local Universe.
Alonso-Herrera et al. (2016); > 100s of targets (Asmus et al., 2014).

5. What science areas would strongly benefit?
Star-forming galaxies and local group star clusters.
Brandl et al. (2012) and ESO Messenger (2004).

6. What science areas would strongly benefit?
Circumstellar environments of evolved stars.
> 100s of targets (Lagadec et al. 2011)
Eta Carina
Smith et al. (2001; 2002)

7. Planets in Formation with Circumplanetary Disks Hd Quanz et al.(2013; 2015); Mulders et al. (2013); Liu et al (2003) Predicted contrast of < 10-3 at 10 microns between 0.5” compared to N = -1 (integrated) resolved disk emission at 0.15”.

8. Characterizing Planets at 10 microns: > 10s extant targets
51 Eri b - MacIntosh et al. (2015)
Separation 0.45” L’ ~ 4.5 magnitude star. Fp/F* ~ 5x10-3 Planet T ~ 700 K 2MJ with low gravity
Madhusudhan & Seager (2010)

9. Possible to detect water-zone planet around a Cen A
Simulations for mid-IR camera on ELT (Quanz et al. 2015; METIS Team). For Magellan, such an observation might take about 80 hours (TBC).

10. Does this sound familiar? MIRAC-3 @ Magellan!
All partner institutions used MIRAC-BLINC at Magellan.
Harvard-Smithsonian CfA (12 nights/5 P.I.s)
U. Michigan (7 nights/2 P.I.s)
UofA (14 nights/4 P.I.s)
Carnegie (6 nights/1 P.I.)
MIT (3 nights/1 P.I.)
13 groups used MIRAC/BLINC during five campaigns in resulting in over a dozen abstracts/publications.

11. MIRAC-3 on Baade in May, 2002

12. MIRAC-4 on MMT in February, 2007

13. What is new about MIRAC-5 @ Magellan?
Mag-AO is now a work-horse on Clay.
Exploring upgrade to MCT detector (McMurtry et al. 2013)
MIRAC needs refurbishment but most of hardware used.
Private foundation interested in partnering with Magellan to enable this capability.
All partner institutions welcome to contribute to project.
Detector testing planned for 2017, possible to commission in 2018 and on-sky in March/April 2019.

14. Should we do this?
There is a diverse & compelling science case for MIRAC-5.
Complementary capability in the JWST Era.
Magellan Consortium partnership with foundation attractive.
Strong leverage of legacy MIRAC development and Mag-AO.
Impact to Magellan and Mag-AO should be minimal.
Ground-truth for exoplanet imaging in GMT era.
In good conditions GMT will be telescope-limited thermal IR.

15. Earths in Sun-like “Sweet Spot” Kepler stats (Howard et al. 2012) + instrument model gives estimate # of detectable Super-Earths around nearest stars Quanz, Crossfield, Meyer et al. (2015) N.B.: Pole-on better, binaries bad.

16. What science areas would strongly benefit?
Multiple-image strong lenses at modest redshift.
Star-forming galaxies and AGN in local Universe.
Warm dust emission in local group star clusters.
Circumstellar environments of evolved stars.
Star formation and planet-forming disks.
Exoplanet detection and characterization.