Twelve thousand laser-AO observations: first results from the Robo-AO large surveys

Abstract

Robo-AO is the first AO system which can feasibly perform surveys of thousands of targets. The system has been operating in a fully robotic mode on the Palomar 1.5m telescope for almost two years. Robo-AO has completed nearly 12,000 high-angular-resolution observations in almost 20 separate science programs including exoplanet characterization, field star binarity, young star binarity and solar system observations. We summarize the Robo-AO surveys and the observations completed to date. We also describe the data-reduction pipeline we developed for Robo-AO—the first fully-automated AO data-reduction, point-spread-function subtraction and companion-search pipeline.