The Lyot Project: status and results

We present a retrospective on, and some new imaging data from The Lyot Project JHK coronagraph which is used behind the 3.6 m AEOS 941-channel AO telescope on Mt. Haleakala, on the island of Maui in Hawaii. This instrument is the first ‘extreme adaptive optics’ (ExAO) coronagraph ever; it opens up new scientific search spaces in direct imaging of faint companions of nearby stars. It also blazed a trail for current ExAO systems being developed for ESO-VLT and Gemini telescopes. Amongst other things, the Lyot Project has been used to demonstrate a device for precision coronagraphic astrometry and photometry using the novel technique of placing a wire grid over the pupil to create stable fiducial ghost images, to show the effects of frozen actuators on a deformable mirror, to refine angular differential imaging for use on the Coudé focus of Alt-Az telescopes, and to develop a coronagraphic data reduction pipeline. To cite this article: A. Sivaramakrishnan et al., C. R. Physique 8 (2007).