Older Mauna Kea telescope to join hunt for exoplanets

An instrument delivered Saturday will allow one of the older telescopes on Mauna Kea to join the search for Earthlike planets outside the solar system.

Amid snow flurries, the French-made SpectroPolarimetre Infra-Rouge, nicknamed SPIRou, arrived at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope.

Its mission is to find new habitable planets orbiting nearby red-dwarf stars, according to a release. It is capable of detecting tiny gravitational perturbations in a star made by an orbiting planet.

“SPIRou is a giant leap forward for the search for planets,” said Claire Moutou, astronomer and SPIRou instrument scientist at the observatory. “With its high precision and ability to look at infrared light, we will discover planets that were undiscoverable before. It’s very exciting.”

Greg Barrick, project engineer for SPIRou, said, “No one else on Earth right now has cameras that can make these measurements.”

Along with professional astronomers, dozens of public high school students are anticipating the chance to use SPIRou through the Maunakea Scholars program, which gives observing time and mentorship to students statewide. Many of the group’s project proposals so far have been beyond the boundaries of current technology until now.

SPIRou will be reassembled at the observatory over the next several months.

The Canada-France- Hawaii Telescope is a world-class, 3.6-meter optical/infrared telescope that became operational in 1979.

The neighboring Keck Observatory has been very active in the search for extrasolar planets, or exoplanets. In particular, astronomers would like to find nearby stars that are about Earth’s size, rocky rather than gaseous, and in the habitable or “Goldilocks” zone — neither too hot nor too cold — where water would exist in liquid form.

The twin Keck telescopes have had an important role in confirming the presence of exoplanets detected by the Kepler satellite. According to NASA, so far 2,538 exoplanets have been confirmed, including 30 small planets in the habitable zone.