  Placing a pupil mask with a gaussian aperture into the optical train of
current telescopes represents a way to attain high contrast imaging that
potentially improves contrast by orders of magnitude compared to current
techniques. We present here the first observations ever using a gaussian
aperture pupil mask (GAPM) on the Penn State near-IR Imager and Spectrograph
(PIRIS) at the Mt. Wilson 100$^{\prime\prime}$ telescope. Two nearby stars were
observed, $\epsilon$ Eridani and $\mu$ Her A. A faint companion was detected
around $\mu$ Her A, confirming it as a proper motion companion. Furthermore,
the observed H and K magnitudes of the companion were used to constrain its
nature. No companions or faint structure were observed for $\epsilon$ Eridani.
We found that our observations with the GAPM achieved contrast levels similar
to our coronographic images, without blocking light from the central star. The
mask's performance also nearly reached sensitivities reported for other ground
based adaptive optics coronographs and deep HST images, but did not reach
theoretically predicted contrast levels. We outline ways that could improve the
performance of the GAPM by an order of magnitude or more.
