Related papers: Phase-Occultation Nulling Coronagraphy
Imaging exo-Earths is an exciting but challenging task because of the 10^-10 contrast ratio between these planets and their host star at separations narrower than 100 mas. Large segmented aperture space telescopes enable the sensitivity…
Phase apodization coronagraphs are implemented in a pupil plane to create a dark hole in the science camera focal plane. They are successfully created as "Apodizing Phase Plates" (APPs) using classical optical manufacturing, and as…
This paper introduces an analytical method to calculate segment-level wavefront error tolerances in order to enable the detection of faint extra-solar planets using segmented telescopes in space. This study provides a full treatment of…
Space borne nulling interferometry in the mid-infrared waveband is one of the most promising techniques for characterizing the atmospheres of extra-solar planets orbiting in the habitable zone of their parent star, and possibly discovering…
The Optimal Optical Coronagraph (OOC) Workshop at the Lorentz Center in September 2017 in Leiden, the Netherlands gathered a diverse group of 25 researchers working on exoplanet instrumentation to stimulate the emergence and sharing of new…
Direct imaging of Earth-like planets is one of the main science cases for the next generation of extremely large telescopes. This is very challenging due to the star-planet contrast that must be overcome. Most current high-contrast imaging…
A high contrast coronagraph is expected to provide one of the promising ways to directly observe extra-solar planets. We present the newest results of our laboratory experiment investigating "rigid" coronagraph with a binary shaped…
Specific high contrast imaging instruments are mandatory to characterize circumstellar disks and exoplanets around nearby stars. Coronagraphs are commonly used in these facilities to reject the diffracted light of an observed star and…
The high-contrast coronagraph for direct imaging earth-like exoplanet at the visible needs a contrast of 10^(-10) at a small angular separation of 4 lambda/D or less. Here we report our recent laboratory experiment that is close to the…
We introduce a new class of solutions for Apodized Pupil Lyot Coronagraphs (APLC) with segmented aperture telescopes to remove broadband diffracted light from a star with a contrast level of $10^{10}$. These new coronagraphs provide a key…
Space-borne nulling interferometers have long been considered as the best option for searching and characterizing extra-solar planets located in the habitable zone of their parent stars. Solutions for achieving deep starlight extinction are…
Detecting exoplanets and other faint sources of emitted and reflected light near a bright star requires deeply suppressing the starlight while efficiently transmitting the dim light from its surroundings. This suppression can be carried out…
Optical observations of solar corona provide key information on its magnetic geometry. The large-scale open field of the corona plays an important role in shaping the ambient solar wind and constraining the propagation dynamics of the…
Less than 3% of the known exoplanets were directly imaged for two main reasons. They are angularly very close to their parent star, which is several magnitudes brighter. Direct imaging of exoplanets thus requires a dedicated instrumentation…
We report on the performance of a vector apodizing phase plate coronagraph that operates over a wavelength range of $2-5 \mu$m and is installed in MagAO/Clio2 at the 6.5 m Magellan Clay telescope at Las Campanas Observatory, Chile. The…
The detection and characterization of Earth-like exoplanets around Sun-like stars for future flagship missions requires coronagraphs to achieve contrasts on the order of 1e-10 at close angular separations and over large spectral bandwidths…
For direct imaging of exoplanets, a stellar coronagraph helps to remove the image of an observed bright star by attenuating the diffraction effects caused by the telescope aperture of diameter D. The Dual Zone Phase Mask (DZPM) coronagraph…
Using 2 aspheric mirrors, it is possible to apodize a telescope beam without losing light or angular resolution: the output beam is produced by ``remapping'' the entrance beam to produce the desired light intensity distribution in a new…
The development of spaceborne coronagraphic technology is of paramount importance to the detection of habitable exoplanets in visible light. In space, coronagraphs are able to bypass the limitations imposed by the atmosphere to reach deeper…
Stellar coronagraph performance is highly sensitive to optical aberrations. In order to effectively suppress starlight for exoplanet imaging applications, low-order wavefront aberrations entering a coronagraph such as tip-tilt, defocus and…