Biller, B. A., and 13 colleagues, 2007 An Imaging Survey for Extrasolar Planets around 45 Close, Young Stars with the Simultaneous Differential Imager at the Very Large Telescope and MMT, ApJS, 173, 143 (Galactic, extrasolar planets) Pavlenko, Y. V., H. R. A. Jones, E. L. Martín, E. Guenther, M. A. Kenworthy, and M. R. Zapatero Osorio, 2007 Lithium in LP944-20 MNRAS, 380, 1285 (Galactic, brown dwarfs) Kenworthy, M.A., Codona, J.L., Hinz, P.M., Angel, J.R.P., Heinze, A., Sivanandam, S. 2007 First On-Sky High-Contrast Imaging with an Apodizing Phase Plate ApJ, 660, 762 (Instrumentation, coronagraphs) Liu, W. M., P. M. Hinz, M. R. Meyer, E. E. Mamajek, W. F. Hoffmann, G. Brusa, D. Miller, and M. A. Kenworthy, 2007 Observations of Herbig Ae Disks with Nulling Interferometry ApJ, 658, 1164 (Galactic, interferometry, Herbig stars) Wilson, J. C., Hinz, P., Kenworthy, M., Skrutskie, M., Jones, T. J., Nelson, M., Woodward, C. E., Garnavich, P., 2007 LMIRCam 3-5 micron Imager for the LBT Combined Focus Proceedings from the Spirit of Lyot conference, Berkeley, CA June 2007 (Instrumentation) Kenworthy, M. A., Hinz, P. M., Codona, J. L., Angel, R. P., Heinze, A., Apai, D., Mamajek, E., Sivanandam, S., Meyer, M., 2007 Exoplanet Surveys at Five Microns with Direct and APP Imaging at the MMT Observatory Proceedings from the Spirit of Lyot conference, Berkeley, CA June 2007 (Instrumentation, extrasolar planets)
M. Kenworthy, in collaboration with P. Hinz and J. Codona, investigated the performance of a new type of coronagraphic optic called an Apodizing Phase Plate. A series of observations taken at the MMTO 6.5m telescope with the Adaptive Optics system and Clio 5 micron camera demonstrated the validity of the theory and carried out observations of a nearby low mass stellar system. The optic showed that high contrast observations of nearby stars in subsequent extrasolar planet surveys will be sensitive down to a few Jupiter masses and to within a few AU of the target star. (Instrumentation, extrasolar planets) M. Kenworthy, in collaboration with Y. Pavlenko (University of Hertfordshire), analysed spectra from the young brown dwarf LP 944-20 and determined that with a semi-empirical model of the brown dwarf's atmosphere, that the amount of Lithium has been significantly underestimated. (Brown dwarfs, galactic) M. Kenworthy, in collaboration with A. Sheinis (University of Wisconsin/Madison) has investigated the possibility of building an adaptive optics system for the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT). The conclusion is that by adding a tip/tilt and piston correction that is matched to each of the 91 primary mirror hexagonal segments, significant flux throughput increases are possible for 0.8 to 1.5 microns. A test bed demonstrator is being considered for building in the next year. (Instrumentation, adaptive optics)