Related papers: The Extreme Polarimeter: Design, Performance, Firs…
Imaging polarimetry is a powerful tool for detecting and characterizing exoplanets and circumstellar environments. Polarimetry allows a separation of the light coming from an unpolarized source such as a star and the polarized source such…
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…
So far, most of the about 5700 exoplanets have been discovered mainly with radial velocity and transit methods. These techniques are sensitive to planets in close orbits, not being able to probe large star--planet separations. $\mu$-lensing…
Polarimetry is one of the keys to enhanced direct imaging of exoplanets. Not only does it deliver a differential observable providing extra contrast, but when coupled with spectroscopy, it also reveals valuable information on the…
The $Herschel$ Space telescope carried out an unprecedented survey of nearby stars for debris disks. The dust present in these debris disks scatters and polarizes stellar light in the visible part of the spectrum. We explore what can be…
A new generation of telescopes with mirror diameters of 20 m or more, called extremely large telescopes (ELTs) has the potential to provide unprecedented imaging and spectroscopy of exo-planetary systems, if the difficulties in achieving…
Polarimetry is widely considered a powerful observational technique in X-ray astronomy, useful to enhance our understanding of the emission mechanisms, geometry and magnetic field arrangement of many compact objects. However, the lack of…
Very little is known about the polarimetric properties of CH stars and carbon-enhanced metal-poor (CEMP) stars, although many of these objects have been studied in detail both photometrically and spectroscopically. We aim to derive…
We report the first direct detection of an exoplanet in the visible polarized light. The transiting planet HD189733b is one of the very hot Jupiters with shortest periods and, thus, smallest orbits, which makes them ideal candidates for…
In recent decades, the relevance of polarimetry in planetary sciences and astronomy has increased rapidly. Polarization is a fundamental property of light and can be modified by any scattering event. As such, polarization yields additional…
We have built and tested a compact, low-cost, but very-high-performance astronomical polarimeter based on a continuously rotating half-wave plate and a high-speed imaging detector. The polarimeter is suitable for small telescopes up to ~1 m…
With over 1,000,000 images from more than 10,000 exposures using state-of-the-art high-contrast imagers (e.g., Gemini Planet Imager, VLT/SPHERE) in the search for exoplanets, can artificial intelligence (AI) serve as a transformative tool…
Polarimetric imaging is one of the most effective techniques for high-contrast imaging and characterization of circumstellar environments. These environments can be characterized through direct-imaging polarimetry at near-infrared…
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 polarization state of starlight reflected by a planetary atmosphere uniquely reveals coverage, particle size, and composition of aerosols as well as changing cloud patterns. It is not possible to obtain a comparable level of detailed…
We consider a method for obtaining information on polarization of astronomical objects radiation at diffraction limited resolution - differential speckle polarimetry. As an observable we propose to use averaged cross spectrum of two…
Polarimetry remains a largely unexploited technique in observational X-ray astronomy which could provide insight in the study of the strong gravity and magnetic fields at the core of the Constellation-X observational program. Adding a…
Few circumstellar disks have been directly observed. Here we use sensitive differential polarimetric techniques to overcome atmospheric speckle noise in order to image the circumstellar material around HD 169142. The detected envelope or…
There are different methods for finding exoplanets such as radial spectral shifts, astrometrical measurements, transits, timing etc. Gravitational microlensing (including pixel-lensing) is among the most promising techniques with the…
Direct imaging of exoplanets is crucial for advancing our understanding of planetary systems beyond our solar system, but it faces significant challenges due to the high contrast between host stars and their planets. Wavefront aberrations…