Related papers: Computing extinction maps of star nulling interfer…
The Microlensing Planet Finder (MPF) is a proposed Discovery mission that will complete the first census of extrasolar planets with sensitivity to planets like those in our own solar system. MPF will employ a 1.1m aperture telescope, which…
We introduce a new method of searching for and characterizing extra-solar planets. We show that by monitoring the center-of-light motion of microlensing alerts using the next generation of high precision astrometric instruments the…
Context. Phase-mask coronagraphy is advantageous in terms of inner working angle and discovery space. It is however still plagued by drawbacks such as sensitivity to tip-tilt errors and chromatism. A nulling stellar coronagraph based on the…
Aims: Optical interferometry from space for the purpose of detecting and characterising exoplanets is seeing a revival, specifically from missions such as the proposed Large Interferometer For Exoplanets (LIFE). A default assumption since…
Extinction maps are essential for tracing interstellar dust and enabling accurate stellar population studies in galaxies. Here, a high-resolution extinction distribution of nearby galaxy M33 is constructed by fitting multiband color indexes…
We are studying the column density distribution of all nearby giant molecular clouds. As part of this project we generated several all sky extinction maps. They are calculated using the median near infrared colour excess technique applied…
Due to their extremely small luminosity compared to the stars they orbit, planets outside our own Solar System are extraordinarily difficult to detect directly in optical light. Careful photometric monitoring of distant stars, however, can…
Earth-sized planets around nearby stars are being detected for the first time by ground-based radial velocity and space-based transit surveys. This milestone is opening the path towards the definition of missions able to directly detect the…
The MPF mission will provide a statistical census of exoplanets with masses greater than 0.1 Earth-masses and orbital separations ranging from 0.5AU to infinity. This includes analogs to all the Solar System's planets except for Mercury, as…
The detection and atmospheric characterization of potentially habitable, temperate terrestrial exoplanets using a space-based mid-infrared nulling interferometer is a major goal of contemporary astrophysics. A central part of the analysis…
Direct detection of a planet around a star in the mid-IR, requires a nulling interferometer featuring an achromatic phase shift of pi on broad range. A new concept for designing such an achromatic phase shifter is presented here. The major…
Nulling interferometry is a powerful observing technique to reach exoplanets and circumstellar dust at separations too small for direct imaging with single-dish telescopes and too large for indirect methods. With near-future…
Space borne nulling interferometry in the mid-infrared waveband is one of the most promising techniques for characterizing the atmospheres of extra-solar planets orbiting in the habitable zone of their parent star, and possibly discovering…
The Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) will make precise astrometric measurements that can be used to detect planets around nearby stars. We have simulated SIM observations and estimated the ability of SIM to detect planets with given…
We present three 14400 square degree relative extinction maps of the Galactic Plane (|b|<20degrees) obtained from 2MASS using accumulative star counts (Wolf diagrams). This method is independent of the colour of the stars and the variation…
The effects of dust extinction on the departure from axi-symmetry in the morphology of planetary nebulae (PNs) are investigated through a comparison of the radio free-free emission and hydrogen recombination line images. The dust…
Observations of extrasolar planets using Integral Field Spectroscopy (IFS), if coupled with an extreme Adaptive Optics system and analyzed with a Simultaneous Differential Imaging technique (SDI), are a powerful tool to detect and…
One of the long-term goals of exoplanet science is the (atmospheric) characterization of a large sample (>100) of terrestrial planets to assess their potential habitability and overall diversity. Hence, it is crucial to quantitatively…
Interstellar absorption in the galactic plane is highly variable from one direction to another. In this paper colour excesses and distances from a new open cluster sample are used to investigate the spatial distribution of the interstellar…
(Abridged) Context: In the previous paper in this series, we identified that a pentagonal arrangement of five telescopes, using a kernel-nulling beam combiner, shows notable advantages for some important performance metrics for a…