Near-infrared coronagraph imager on the Subaru 8m telescope

We introduce a near-infrared camera named coronagraph imager with adaptive optics (CIAO) mounted on the Subaru 8m telescope. Combined with the Subaru 36 elements adaptive optics (AO), CIAO can produce nearly diffraction limited image with similar to0.07 axcsec FWHM at K band and high dynamic range imaging with similar to10 mag difference at 1 axcsec separation under typical seeing conditions. We have carried out performance tests of imaging without and with coronagraph mask since its first light observation held on 2000 February Because of limited weather conditions, the performance under best seeing conditions has not been tested yet. At a typical natural seeing condition of 0.4-0.8 arcsec, halo component of PSF using 0.2-0.8 axcsec mask can be reduced up to 70% comparing with that without mask using AO. Even after correction, residual wave front error has typically 1.2 rad 2 which corresponds to the Strehl ratio of similar to0.3 at K band. Such wave front errors degrades the image quality; this is a common problem of coronagraph on the ground-based telescope with non high-order AO. Nevertheless we emphasize that there axe various advantages on our coronagraph: the clean PSF of CIAO, reduction of readout noise, and less effect of detector memory problem. Compared with coronagraphs on smaller telescopes, the PSF shape is sharper and it brings higher detectability of sources around bright objects.