Related papers: Simulation of a method to directly image exoplanet…

Future space telescopes may be able to directly image $\sim$10 - 100 planets with sizes and orbits consistent with habitable surface conditions ("exo-Earth candidates" or EECs), but observers will face difficulty in distinguishing these…

Direct imaging of exoplanets is a challenging task as it requires to reach a high contrast at very close separation to the star. Today, the main limitation in the high-contrast images is the quasi-static speckles that are created by…

We present high angular resolution imaging observations of 517 host stars of TESS exoplanet candidates using the `Alopeke and Zorro speckle cameras at Gemini North and South. The sample consists mainly of bright F, G, K stars at distances…

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…

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…

RefPlanets is a guaranteed time observation (GTO) programme that uses the Zurich IMaging POLarimeter (ZIMPOL) of SPHERE/VLT for a blind search for exoplanets in wavelengths from 600-900 nm. The goals of this study are the characterization…

Context. The direct detection of exoplanets with high-contrast imaging requires advanced data processing methods to disentangle potential planetary signals from bright quasi-static speckles. Among them, angular differential imaging (ADI)…

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.…

Astrometric measurements of stellar systems are becoming significantly more precise and common, with many ground and space-based instruments and missions approaching 1 microarcsecond precision. We examine the multi-wavelength astrometric…

Direct imaging is likely the best way to characterize the atmospheres of Earth-sized exoplanets in the habitable zone of Sun-like stars. Previously, Stark et al. (2014, 2015, 2016) estimated the Earth twin yield of future direct imaging…

Direct imaging of exoplanets requires to separate the background noise from the exoplanet signals. Statistical methods have been recently proposed to avoid subtracting any signal of interest as opposed to initial self-subtracting methods…

Motivated by the possibility that a coronagraph will be put on WFIRST/AFTA, we explore the direct detectability of extrasolar giant planets (EGPs) in the optical. We quantify a planet's detectability by the fraction of its orbit for which…

We research the requirements of High Contrast Imaging when combined with the cross correlation (CC) of high resolution spectra with known spectroscopic templates for detecting and characterising exoplanets in reflected light. We simulate…

WFIRST will conduct a coronagraphic program of characterizing the atmospheres of planets around bright nearby stars. When observed with the WFIRST Wide Field Camera, these stars will saturate the detector and produce very strong diffraction…

Several concepts now exist for small, space-based missions to directly characterize exoplanets in reflected light. Here, we develop an instrument noise model suitable for studying the spectral characterization potential of a…

ESPI has been proposed for direct imaging and spectral analysis of giant planets orbiting solar-type stars. ESPI extends the concept suggested by Nisenson and Papaliolios (2001) for a square aperture apodized telescope that has sufficient…

We present a new matched filter algorithm for direct detection of point sources in the immediate vicinity of bright stars. The stellar Point Spread Function (PSF) is first subtracted using a Karhunen-Lo\'eve Image Processing (KLIP)…

Context. Several exoplanet direct imaging instruments will soon be in operation. They use an extreme adaptive optics (XAO) system to correct the atmospheric turbulence and provide a highly-corrected beam to a near-infrared (NIR) coronagraph…

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…

Most of our knowledge of planets orbiting nearby stars comes from Doppler surveys. For spaced-based, high-contrast imaging missions, nearby stars with Doppler-discovered planets are attractive targets. The known orbits tell imaging missions…