Related papers: Formation and evolution of planetary systems: the …
New images of young stars are revolutionizing our understanding of planet formation. ALMA detects large grains in planet-forming disks with few AU scale resolution and scattered light imaging with extreme adaptive optics systems reveal…
This presentation summarizes how some of the most pressing questions in the field of star and planet formation can be addressed by high angular resolution optical/infrared capabilities, and how many of these capabilities will in fact be…
As astronomers, we are living an exciting time for what concerns the search for other worlds. Recent discoveries have already deeply impacted our vision of planetary formation and architectures. Future bio-signature discoveries will…
The imaging of disks around young stars presents extreme challenges in high dynamic range, angular resolution, and sensitivity. Recent instrumental advances have met these challenges admirably, leading to a marked increase in imaging…
High-contrast adaptive optics imaging is a powerful technique to probe the architectures of planetary systems from the outside-in and survey the atmospheres of self-luminous giant planets. Direct imaging has rapidly matured over the past…
Our understanding of extra-solar planet systems is highly driven by advances in observations in the past decade. Thanks to high precision spectrograph, we are able to reveal unseen companions to stars with the radial velocity method. High…
Understanding how giant and terrestrial planets form and evolve, what is their internal structure and that of their atmosphere, represents one of the major challenges of modern astronomy, which is directly connected to the ultimate search…
Stars and planets are the fundamental objects of the Universe. Their formation processes, though related, may differ in important ways. Stars almost certainly form from gravitational collapse and probably have formed this way since the…
We summarize some of the compelling new scientific opportunities for understanding stars and stellar systems that can be enabled by sub-milliarcsec (sub-mas) angular resolution, UV-Optical spectral imaging observations, which can reveal the…
The closest examples of high-mass star birth occurs in deeply embedded environments at kiloparsec distances. Although much progress has been made, an observationally validated picture of the dominant processes which allows the central…
The discovery of thousands of exoplanets has shown that the birth of planets is a very efficient process in nature. Several physical mechanisms have been proposed to describe the assembly of planets in disks surrounding young stars.…
We present a review of the interplay between the evolution of circumstellar disks and the formation of planets, both from the perspective of theoretical models and dedicated observations. Based on this, we identify and discuss fundamental…
The spatial distribution and lifetime of molecular gas in the inner regions of young circumstellar disks are key to understanding the formation of planetary systems. Gas-rich disks are observed to disperse in the first ~10 Myr, and recent…
Despite the revolution in our knowledge resulting from the detection of planets around mature stars, we know almost nothing about planets orbiting young stars because rapid rotation and active photospheres preclude detection by radial…
Exoplanet research has shown an incessant growth since the first claim of a hot giant planet around a solar-like star in the mid-1990s. Today, the new facilities are working to spot the first habitable rocky planets around low-mass stars as…
I review the characteristics of planetary systems accessible to imaging. I show that, beyond the basic angular resolution and dynamics performances of an optical ``architecture'', other performances such as photometric precision, spectral…
Over the past ten years, the concept of adaptive optics has evolved from early experimental stages to a standard observing tool now available at almost all major optical and near-infrared telescope facilities. Adaptive optics will also be…
The development of adaptive optics (AO) played a major role in modern astronomy over the last three decades. By compensating for the atmospheric turbulence, these systems enable to reach the diffraction limit on large telescopes. In this…
A detailed understanding of the physics of star and planet formation requires study of individual objects as well as statistical assessment of global properties and evolutionary trends. Observational investigations of circumstellar material…
The last two decades have seen remarkable progress in our long-standing goal of determining the abundance and diversity of worlds in the Galaxy. Understanding of this subject involves tracing the path of interstellar material from dense…