Related papers: Photometric characterization of exoplanets using a…
We present a novel machine-learning approach for detecting faint point sources in high-contrast adaptive optics imaging datasets. The most widely used algorithms for primary subtraction aim to decouple bright stellar speckle noise from…
Planets reflect and linearly polarize the radiation that they receive from their host stars. The emergent polarization is sensitive to aspects of the planet atmosphere such as the gas composition and the occurrence of condensates and their…
Although there exists a large sample of known exoplanets, little spectroscopic data exists that can be used to study their global atmospheric properties. This deficiency can be addressed by performing phase-resolved spectroscopy --…
Photometry of short-period planetary systems allows astronomers to monitor exoplanets, their host stars, and their mutual interactions. In addition to the transits of a planet in front of its star and the eclipses of the planet by its star,…
For much of human history we have wondered how our solar system formed, and whether there are any other planets like ours around other stars. Only in the last 20 years have we had direct evidence for the existence of exoplanets, with the…
Aims. We present simulations of the perfomances of the future SPHERE IFS instrument designed for imaging extrasolar planets in the near infrared (Y, J, and H bands). Methods. We used the IDL package code for adaptive optics simulation…
High-resolution doppler spectroscopy provides a powerful means for chemical detections in exoplanetary atmospheres. This approach involves monitoring hundreds of molecular lines in the planetary spectrum doppler shifted by the orbital…
The detection of exoplanets in coronographic images is severely limited by residual starlight speckles. Dedicated post-processing can drastically reduce this "stellar leakage" and thereby increase the faintness of detectable exoplanets.…
Young giant exoplanets emit infrared radiation that can be linearly polarized up to several percent. This linear polarization can trace: 1) the presence of atmospheric cloud and haze layers, 2) spatial structure, e.g. cloud bands and…
One of the big challenges in exoplanet science is to determine the atmospheric makeup of extrasolar planets, and to find biosignatures that hint at the existence of biochemical processes on another world. The biomarkers we are trying to…
In anticipation of future flagship missions focused on the goal of achieving direct imaging of rocky exoplanets, we have developed a database of models to help the community examine the potential spectral characteristics of a broad range of…
Coronagraphic imaging in combination with moderate to high spectral resolution may prove more effective in both detecting extrasolar planets and characterizing them than a standard coronagraphic imaging approach. We envisage an…
Extra-solar planets have not been imaged directly with existing ground or space telescopes because they are too faint to be seen against the halo of the nearby bright star. Most techniques being explored to suppress the halo are achromatic,…
In the context of extrasolar planet direct detection, we evaluated the performance of differential imaging with ground-based telescopes. This study was carried out in the framework of the VLT-Planet Finder project and is further extended to…
Context: Combining high-contrast imaging with medium- or high-resolution integral field spectroscopy has the potential to boost the detection rate of exoplanets, especially at small angular separations. Furthermore, it immediately provides…
SPHERE (Spectro Polarimetric High contrast Exoplanet REsearch), the planet finder instrument for the VLT is designed to study relatively bright extrasolar giant planets around young or nearby stars. SPHERE is a set of three instruments fed…
Spectral retrieval has long been a powerful tool for interpreting planetary remote sensing observations. Flexible, parameterised, agnostic models are coupled with inversion algorithms in order to infer atmospheric properties directly from…
Direct imaging of extrasolar planets with future space-based coronagraphic telescopes may provide a means of detecting companion moons at wavelengths where the moon outshines the planet. We propose a detection strategy based on the…
Angular differential imaging provides a novel way of probing the high contrast of our universe. Until now, its applications have been primarily localized to searching for exoplanets around nearby stars. This work presents a suite of…
With a new generation of observatories coming online this decade, the process of characterizing exoplanet atmospheres will need to be reinvented. Currently mostly on the instrumental side, characterization bottlenecks will soon stand by the…