Press Release

Eyes Wide Open for MASCARA in Chile

Exoplanet hunter sees first light at ESO’s La Silla Observatory

19 July 2017

The MASCARA (Multi-site All-Sky CAmeRA) station at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile has achieved first light. This new facility will seek out transiting exoplanets as they pass in front of their bright parent stars and create a catalogue of targets for future exoplanet characterisation observations.

In June 2016, ESO reached an agreement with Leiden University to site a station of MASCARA at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile, taking advantage of the excellent observing conditions of the southern hemisphere skies. This station is now made its first successful test observations.

The MASCARA station in Chile is the second to begin operations; the first station is in the northern hemisphere on the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands. Each station contains a battery of cameras in a temperature-controlled enclosure which will monitor almost the entire sky visible from its location [1].

“Stations are needed in both the northern and southern hemisphere to obtain all-sky coverage,” says Ignas Snellen, of Leiden University and the MASCARA project lead. “With the second station at La Silla now in place, we can monitor almost all the brighter stars over the entire sky.”

Built by Leiden University in the Netherlands, MASCARA is a planet-hunting instrument. Its very compact and low-cost design appears unassuming, but is innovative, flexible and highly reliable. Consisting of five digital cameras with off-the-shelf components, this small planet-hunter takes repeated measurements of the brightnesses of thousands of stars and uses software to hunt for the slight dimming of a star’s light as a planet crosses the face of the star.

This exoplanet discovery method is called transit photometry. The planet’s size and orbit can be directly determined through this method, and in very bright systems the planet's atmosphere can also be characterised by further observations with large telescopes such as ESO’s Very Large Telescope.

The main purpose of MASCARA is to find exoplanets around the brightest stars in the sky, currently not probed either by space or ground-based surveys. The target population for MASCARA consists mostly of “hot Jupiters” — large worlds that are physically similar to Jupiter but orbit very close to their parent star, resulting in high surface temperatures and orbital periods of only a few hours. Dozens of hot Jupiters have been discovered with the radial velocity exoplanet detection method, as they exert a noticeably gravitational influence on their host stars.

“Not much can yet be learned from the planets discovered via the radial velocity method, as they require significantly better direct imaging techniques to separate the light of these cool, old planets from that of their host stars,” comments Snellen. “In contrast, planets that transit their host stars can readily be characterised.”

MASCARA also has the potential to discover super-Earths and Neptune-sized planets. The project is expected to provide a catalogue of the brightest nearby targets for future exoplanet characterisation observations, particularly for detailed planetary atmosphere observations.

Notes

[1] MASCARA can monitor stars down to about magnitude 8.4 — roughly ten times fainter than can be seen with the naked eye on a clear dark night. Due to its design, MASCARA is less sensitive to weather condition than other observing instruments, and so observations may be made even when the sky is partially cloudy, thus extending observation times.

More information

ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world’s most productive ground-based astronomical observatory by far. It is supported by 16 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Czechia, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, along with the host state of Chile. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope and its world-leading Very Large Telescope Interferometer as well as two survey telescopes, VISTA working in the infrared and the visible-light VLT Survey Telescope. ESO is also a major partner in two facilities on Chajnantor, APEX and ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. And on Cerro Armazones, close to Paranal, ESO is building the 39-metre Extremely Large Telescope, the ELT, which will become “the world’s biggest eye on the sky”.