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Transit spectroscopy of habitable planets orbiting late-type stars requires high relative spectro-photometric accuracy between wavelengths during transit/eclipse observation. The spectro-photometric signal is not affected only by image…
Direct detection of exoplanets requires high dynamic range imaging. Coronagraphs could be the solution, but their performance in space is limited by wavefront errors (manufacturing errors on optics, temperature variations, etc.), which…
A major science goal of future, large-aperture, optical space telescopes is to directly image and spectroscopically analyze reflected light from potentially habitable exoplanets. To accomplish this, the optical system must suppress…
Exoplanet direct imaging using adaptive optics (AO) is often limited by non-common path aberrations (NCPAs) and aberrations that are invisible to traditional pupil-plane wavefront sensors (WFSs). This can be remedied by focal-plane (FP)…
Motivated by the desire to image exosolar planets, recent work by us and others has shown that high-contrast imaging can be achieved using specially shaped pupil masks. To date, the masks we have designed have been symmetric with respect to…
Well over 700 exoplanets have been detected to date. Only a handful of these have been observed directly. Direct observation is extremely challenging due to the small separation and very large contrast involved. Imaging polarimetry offers a…
Direct observation of extra-solar planets (exoplanets) is essential to understand how planetary systems were born, how they evolve, and ultimately, to identify biological signatures on these planets. However, the enormous contrast in flux…
Aims. We used realistic three-dimensional (3D) radiative hydrodynamical (RHD) simulations from the Stagger-grid and synthetic images computed with the radiative transfer code Optim3D to provide interferometric observables to extract the…
Over the past 4 decades, the exploration of planets beyond our solar system has yielded the discovery of over 5600 exoplanets orbiting different stars. Continuous advancements in instrumentation and cutting-edge techniques empower…
Post-processing algorithms play a key role in pushing the detection limits of high-contrast imaging (HCI) instruments. State-of-the-art image processing approaches for HCI enable the production of science-ready images relying on…
Future optical interferometric instrumentation mainly relies on the availability of an efficient cophasing system: once available, what has so far postponed the relevance of direct imaging with an interferometer will vanish. This paper…
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…
Radio wavelength astrometry of stars and other objects has a long and productive history. The use of that technique to determine whether stars have planets around them would cover a nearly unique part of the parameter space for detection of…
Aims. We present a solution to improve the performance of coronagraphs for the detection of exo-planets. Methods. We simulate numerically several kinds of coronagraphic systems, with the aim of evaluating the gain obtained with an adaptive…
Imaging terrestrial exoplanets around nearby stars is a formidable technical challenge, requiring the development of coronagraphs to suppress the stellar halo of diffracted light at the location of the planet. In this review, we derive the…
We present a close companion search around sixteen known early-L dwarfs using aperture masking interferometry with Palomar laser guide star adaptive optics. The use of aperture masking allows the detection of close binaries, corresponding…
Ultrathin meta-optics offer unmatched, multifunctional control of light. Next-generation optical technologies, however, demand unprecedented performance. This will likely require design algorithms surpassing the capability of human…
Photometric light curves suffer from fundamental degeneracies that limit surface information recovery. We demonstrate that astrometry enables access to complementary information through photocentre variations induced by rotating surface…
Adaptive Optics is a prime example of how progress in observational astronomy can be driven by technological developments. At many observatories it is now considered to be part of a standard instrumentation suite, enabling ground-based…
We are still in the early days of exoplanet discovery. Astronomers are beginning to model the atmospheres and interiors of exoplanets and have developed a deeper understanding of processes of planet formation and evolution. However, we have…