Related papers: PLATO: PSF modelling using a microscanning techniq…

Planets emit thermal radiation and reflect incident light that they recieve from their host stars. As a planet orbits it's host star the photometric variations associated with these two effects produce very similar phase curves. If observed…

Photometric surveys require precise point spread function (PSF) characterization, as it varies across filters and is crucial for accurate photometry and low surface brightness (LSB) studies. However, the small PSF size provided by default…

The XO project aims at detecting transiting exoplanets around bright stars from the ground using small telescopes. The original configuration of XO (McCullough et al. 2005) has been changed and extended as described here. The instrumental…

We analyse the respective benefits and drawbacks of ground-based and space-based transit surveys for extrasolar planets. Based on simple but realistic assumptions about the fraction of lower main sequence stars harboring telluric and giant…

An international group of scientists has begun planning for the Planet Formation Imager (PFI, www.planetformationimager.org), a next-generation infrared interferometer array with the primary goal of imaging the active phases of planet…

The ExTrA facility, located at La Silla observatory, will consist of a near-infrared multi-object spectrograph fed by three 60-cm telescopes. ExTrA will add the spectroscopic resolution to the traditional differential photometry method.…

The astrometry technique is an important tool for detecting and characterizing exoplanets of different type. In this review, the different projects which are either operating, in construction or in discussion are presented and their…

The NASA TESS mission is conducting a nearly full-sky survey, enabling the photometric characterisation of millions of stars. The forthcoming ESA PLATO mission will provide long-duration, high-precision photometry of tens of thousands of…

The PLATO mission is scheduled for launch in December 2026. It is an ESA M-class mission designed to find small planets around bright stars via the transit technique. The light curves it obtains will be wonderful for other science goals,…

Among the methods proposed to detect extrasolar planets, microlensing is the only technique that can detect free-floating planets. Free-floating planets are detected through the channel of short-duration isolated lensing events. However, if…

We describe a method for deriving the position and flux of point and compact sources observed by a scanning survey mission. Results from data simulated to test our method are presented, which demonstrate that at least a 10-fold improvement…

Anisoplanatic effects can cause significant systematic photometric uncertainty in the analysis of dense stellar fields observed with adaptive optics. Program packages have been developed for a spatially variable PSF, but they require that a…

Removing the aberrations introduced by the Point Spread Function (PSF) is a fundamental aspect of astronomical image processing. The presence of noise in observed images makes deconvolution a nontrivial task that necessitates the use of…

The majority of exoplanets found to date have been discovered via the transit method, and transmission spectroscopy represents the primary method of studying these distant worlds. Currently, in-depth atmospheric characterization of…

The detection and characterization of Earth-like planet is approaching rapidly thanks to radial velocity surveys (HARPS), transit searches (Corot, Kepler) and space observatories dedicated to their characterization are already in…

HSTphot, a photometry package designed to handle the undersampled PSFs found in WFPC2 images, is introduced and described, as well as some of the considerations that have to be made in order to obtain accurate PSF-fitting stellar photometry…

We present a method of centroiding undersampled point spread functions (PSFs) that may be useful, especially when dithering is not an option. If the profile of the expected PSF is known fairly well through characterization of the telescope…

Context. High-contrast imaging is currently the only available technique for the study of the thermodynamical and compositional properties of exoplanets in long-period orbits. The SPICES project is a coronagraphic space telescope dedicated…

The direct imaging from the ground of extrasolar planets has become today a major astronomical and biological focus. This kind of imaging requires simultaneously the use of a dedicated high performance Adaptive Optics [AO] system and a…

In preparation of future Multi-Object Spectrographs (MOS) whose one of the major role is to provide an extensive statistical studies of high redshifted galaxies surveyed, the demonstrator Canary has been designed to tackle technical…