XKID
MKID integral field spectrograph at Magellan Clay telescope behind MagAO-X, enabling high-contrast direct imaging from the Southern Hemisphere.
Overview
XKID is an MKID integral field spectrograph deployed at the Magellan Clay 6.5-m telescope at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, working behind the MagAO-X extreme adaptive optics system. XKID was successfully deployed in March 2023, marking the first deployment of an MKID camera at a Southern Hemisphere telescope and the first behind the MagAO-X system.
The instrument is based on Noah Swimmer’s PhD thesis work at UCSB and uses the same 20,440 pixel MKID array format as MEC, operating in z-J band (800–1,400 nm). XKID combines photon-counting detector capabilities with MagAO-X’s extreme AO correction to achieve unprecedented contrast ratios for high-contrast direct imaging of exoplanets and circumstellar disks.
Science Goals
- Direct imaging of exoplanets and brown dwarf companions around nearby stars
- Characterization of circumstellar disks
- Focal-plane wavefront sensing to enhance AO performance
- Stochastic Speckle Discrimination using photon arrival time statistics
Deployment
The XKID instrument was successfully deployed to the Clay Telescope in March 2023. The MagAO-X extreme AO system provides diffraction-limited correction in the visible and near-IR, enabling XKID to operate near the inner working angle limit set by the telescope aperture.
Thesis Reference
XKID is described in detail in Noah Swimmer’s PhD thesis:
Noah Swimmer. XKID: The MKID Camera for High Contrast Direct Imaging at the Magellan Clay Telescope. UCSB, 2023.