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Ultra-hot Jupiters (UHJs) orbit close to their host stars and experience extreme conditions, making them important laboratories to explore atmospheric composition and dynamics. Transmission spectroscopy is a useful tool to reveal chemical…
Dust grains in protoplanetary disks are the building blocks of planets. Investigating the dust composition and size, and their variation over time, is crucial for understanding the planet formation process. The PDS 70 disk is so far the…
The scientific interest in directly image and identifying Earth-like planets within the Habitable Zone (HZ) around nearby stars is driving the design of specialized direct imaging mission such as ACESAT, EXO-C, EXO-S and AFTA-C. The inner…
The Telescope to Observe Planetary Systems (TOPS) is a proposed space mission to image in the visible (0.4-0.9 micron) planetary systems of nearby stars simultaneously in 16 spectral bands (resolution R~20). For the ~10 most favorable…
Nulling interferometry is an astronomical technique that combines equal wavefronts to achieve a deep rejection ratio of an on-axis star, and that could permit to detect Earth-like planets in the mid-infrared band 5 -- 20 microns. Similarly…
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…
A mid-infrared nulling-space interferometer is a promising way to characterize thermal light from habitable planet candidates around Sun-like stars. However, one of the main challenges for achieving this ambitious goal is a high-precision…
Transit spectroscopy is the most promising path toward characterizing nearby terrestrial planets at mid-infrared wavelengths in the next 20 years. The Spitzer Space telescope has achieved moderately good mid-infrared photometric precision…
Context. This is the third paper of a series devoted to the WIde-field Nearby Galaxy-cluster Survey (WINGS).WINGS is a long term project aimed at gathering wide-field, multiband imaging and spectroscopy of galaxies in a complete sample of…
The coronagraphic instrument (CGI) on the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) will demonstrate technologies and methods for high-contrast direct imaging and spectroscopy of exoplanet systems in reflected light, including…
Planets have been detected around a variety of stars, including low-mass objects, such as brown dwarfs. However, such extreme cases are challenging for planet formation models. Recent sub-millimeter observations of disks around brown dwarf…
We recognize the need for the characterization of exoplanets in reflected light in the visible and in the IR termal emission. But for the thermal infrared we also recognize the difficulty of an interferometric nuller We nevertheless endorse…
Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) presents a significant challenge for carrying out precision measurements in radio astronomy. In particular, RFI can be a showstopper when looking for faint cosmological signals such as the red-shifted…
So far, high resolution techniques on the one hand provide morphological information on bright nearby objects. On the other hand, telescopes with large collecting areas allow us to detect very faint and distant objects, but not to obtain a…
The TOLIMAN project is engaged with the construction, launch and operation of a low-cost space telescope of unorthodox optical design. Its primary science goal targets an exhaustive search for temperate-orbit rocky planets around either…
The Palomar Integral Field Spectrograph was used to probe a variety of environments in nine nearby galaxies that span a range of morphological types, luminosities, metallicities, and infrared-to-blue ratios. For the first time,…
The atmospheres and accretion disks of planetary-mass and substellar companions provide an unprecedented look into planet and moon formation processes, most notably the frequency and lifetime of circumplanetary disks. In our ongoing effort…
The Mid-Infrared instrument (MIRI) on board the James Webb Space Telescope will perform the first ever characterization of young giant exoplanets observed by direct imaging in the 5-28 microns spectral range. This wavelength range is key…
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…
Simulated wide-field images are becoming an important part of observational astronomy, either to prepare for new surveys or to test measurement methods. In order to efficiently explore vast parameter spaces, the computational speed of…