Related papers: Phase-Occultation Nulling Coronagraphy
Directly imaging extrasolar planets using a monolithic optical telescope avoids many pitfalls of space interferometry and opens up the prospect of visible light studies of extrasolar planetary systems. Future astronomical missions may…
A robust post processing technique is mandatory to analyse the coronagraphic high contrast imaging data. Angular Differential Imaging (ADI) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) are the most used approaches to suppress the quasi-static…
The low-frequency sky below $\sim$15 MHz (20 m) is obscured by the Earth's ionosphere, the layer of charged particles above the neutral atmosphere. Single spacecraft have made measurements in this band, but cannot achieve high or even…
Polarization aberrations originating from the telescope and high-contrast imaging instrument optics introduce polarization-dependent speckles and associated errors in the image plane, affecting the measured exoplanet signal. Understanding…
We describe a coronagraphic optic for use with CONICA at the VLT that provides suppression of diffraction from 1.8 to 7 lambda/D at 4.05 microns, an optimal wavelength for direct imaging of cool extrasolar planets. The optic is designed to…
Current plans call for the first Terrestrial Planet Finder mission, TPF-C, to be a monolithic space telescope with a coronagraph for achieving high contrast. The coronagraph removes the diffracted starlight allowing the nearby planet to be…
The discovery of an Earth-mass exoplanet around the nearby star Proxima Centauri provides a prime target for the search for life on planets outside our solar system. Atmospheric characterization of these planets has been proposed by…
We present a MIR coronagraph to target the direct observation of extrasolar planets for SPICA, in which a coronagraph is currently regarded as an option of the focal plane instruments. The primary target of the SPICA coronagraph is the…
Stellar coronagraphs designed for high-contrast imaging of exoplanets inevitably introduce a small amount of instrumental polarization, called \emph{secondary polarization}. At the contrast levels required to detect and characterize…
Uncorrected wavefront errors create speckle noise in high-contrast observations at small inner-working angles. These speckles can be sensed and controlled by using coronagraph integrated wavefront sensors. Here, we will present how the…
Photonic lantern nulling (PLN) is a method for enabling the detection and characterization of close-in exoplanets by exploiting the symmetries of the ports of a mode-selective photonic lantern (MSPL) to cancel out starlight. A six-port MSPL…
Discovering exoplanets in orbit around distant stars via direct imaging is fundamentally impeded by the combined effect of optical diffraction and photon shot noise under extreme star-planet contrast. Coronagraphs strive to increase the…
Context. The next generation of space-borne instruments dedicated to the direct detection of exoplanets requires unprecedented levels of wavefront control precision. Coronagraphic wavefront sensing techniques for these instruments must…
We study the way Lyot coronagraphs with unapodized entrance pupils respond to small, low order phase aberrations. This study is applicable to ground-based adaptive optics coronagraphs operating at 90% and higher Strehl ratios, as well as to…
The Habitable Exoplanet Imaging Mission (HabEx) concept requires an optical coronagraph that provides deep starlight suppression over a broad spectral bandwidth, high throughput for point sources at small angular separation, and…
Instrumental aberrations strongly limit high-contrast imaging of exoplanets, especially when they produce quasistatic speckles in the science images. With the help of recent advances in deep learning, we have developed in previous works an…
There has been an unfortunate gap in coronal emission line observations from space in the visible and near IR (V+NIR). Their distinct scientific advantage stems from the dominance of radiative excitation in their formation, whereby their…
Context. Direct imaging of exoplanets takes advantage of state-of-the-art adaptive optics (AO) systems, coronagraphy, and post-processing techniques. Coronagraphs attenuate starlight to mitigate the unfavorable flux ratio between an…
One of the biggest challenges associated with a nulling interferometer-based approach to detecting extra-solar Earth-like planets comes from the extremely stringent requirements of pathlength, polarization and amplitude matching in the…
The characterization of extrasolar earth-like atmospheres for biosignatures remains one of the most compelling and elusive challenges in astronomy. Coronagraphy, nulling interferometry and free-flying occulters have been advanced as…