Related papers: Adaptive pupil masking for quasi-static speckle su…
Direct imaging of exoplanets or circumstellar disk material requires extreme contrast at the 10-6 to 10-12 levels at < 100 mas angular separation from the star. Focal-plane mask (FPM) coronagraphic imaging has played a key role in this…
Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) are known to be susceptible to adversarial examples. Adversarial examples are maliciously crafted inputs that are designed to fool a model, but appear normal to human beings. Recent work has shown that pixel…
Residual speckles due to aberrations arising from optical errors after the split between the wavefront sensor and the science camera path are the most significant barriers to imaging extrasolar planets. While speckles can be suppressed…
Interest in pupil-remapping interferometry, in which a single telescope pupil is fragmented and recombined using fiber optic technologies, has been growing among a number of groups. As a logical extrapolation from several highly successful…
We present a new processing technique aimed at significantly improving the angular differential imaging method (ADI) in the context of high-contrast imaging of faint objects nearby bright stars in observations obtained with extreme adaptive…
We describe a new approach to obtaining very high surface densities of optical spectra in astronomical observations with extremely accurate subtraction of night sky emission. The observing technique requires that the telescope is nodded…
The spectroscopy of faint planetary-mass companions to nearby stars is one of the main challenges that new-generation high-contrast spectro-imagers are going to face. In a previous work we presented a long slit coronagraph (LSC), for which…
Context. Adaptive optics (AO) systems greatly increase the resolution of large telescopes, but produce complex point spread function (PSF) shapes, varying in time and across the field of view. This PSF must be accurately known since it…
In the two decades since the first extra-solar planet was discovered, the detection and characterization of extra-solar planets has become one of the key endeavors in all of modern science. Recently direct detection techniques such as…
The effects of photon noise, aliasing, wavefront chromaticity and scintillation on the point spread function (PSF) contrast achievable with ground based adaptive optics (AO) are evaluated for different wavefront sensing schemes. I show that…
Detecting transparent objects in natural scenes is challenging due to the low contrast in texture, brightness and colors. Recent deep-learning-based works reveal that it is effective to leverage boundaries for transparent object detection…
The Keck Planet Imager and Characterizer (KPIC) is an instrument at the Keck II telescope that enables high-resolution spectroscopy of directly imaged exoplanets and substellar companions. KPIC uses single-mode fibers to couple the adaptive…
Adaptive optics (AO) have been used to correct wavefronts to achieve diffraction limited point spread functions in a broad range of optical applications, prominently ground-based astronomical telescopes operating in near infra-red. While…
Optical imperfections, misalignments, aberrations, and even dust can significantly limit sensitivity in high-contrast imaging systems such as coronagraphs. An upstream deformable mirror (DM) in the pupil can be used to correct or compensate…
Gaussian aperture pupil masks (GAPMs) can in theory achieve the contrast requisite for directly imaging an extrasolar planet around a nearby solar type star. We outline the process of designing, fabricating, and testing a GAPM for use on…
Initially designed to detect and characterize exoplanets, extreme adaptive optics systems (AO) open a new window on the solar system by resolving its small bodies. Nonetheless, despite the always increasing performances of AO systems, the…
Slow light is a fascinating physical effect, raising fundamental questions related to our understanding of light-matter interactions as well as offering new possibilities for photonic devices. From the first demonstrations of slow light…
We present here a new observational technique, Phase Closure Nulling (PCN), which has the potential to obtain very high contrast detection and spectroscopy of faint companions to bright stars. PCN consists in measuring closure phases of…
Project 1640 is a high-contrast imaging instrument recently commissioned at Palomar observatory. A combination of a coronagraph with an integral field spectrograph (IFS), Project 1640 is designed to detect and characterize extrasolar…
We present the first astronomical observations obtained with an Apodizing Phase Plate (APP). The plate is designed to suppress the stellar diffraction pattern by 5 magnitudes from 2-9 lambda/D over a 180 degree region. Stellar images were…