Related papers: Techniques for High-Contrast Imaging in Multi-Star…
Extra-solar planets direct imaging is now a reality with the deployment and commissioning of the first generation of specialized ground-based instruments (GPI, SPHERE, P1640 and SCExAO). These systems allow of planets $ 10 ^ 7 $ times…
Fewer than 1% of all exoplanets detected to date have been characterized on the basis of spectroscopic observations of their atmosphere. Unlike indirect methods, high-contrast imaging offers access to atmospheric signatures by separating…
Imaging terrestrial exoplanets around nearby stars is a formidable technical challenge, requiring the development of coronagraphs to suppress the stellar halo of diffracted light at the location of the planet. In this review, we derive the…
We explore the capabilities of a starshade mission to directly image multi-star systems. In addition to the diffracted and scattered light for the on-axis star, a multi-star system features additional starlight leakage from the off-axis…
High-contrast imaging provided by a coronagraph is critical for the direction imaging of the Earth-like planet orbiting its bright parent star. A major limitation for such direct imaging is the speckle noise that is induced from the…
One of the key science goals for extremely large telescopes (ELTs) is the detailed characterization of already known directly imaged exoplanets. The typical adaptive optics (AO) Nyquist control region for ELTs is ~0.4 arcseconds, placing…
The current generation of ground-based coronagraphic instruments uses deformable mirrors to correct for phase errors and to improve contrast levels at small angular separations. Improving these techniques, several space and ground based…
Future large space- or ground-based telescopes will offer the resolution and sensitivity to probe the habitable zone of a large sample of nearby stars for exo-Earth imaging. To this end, such facilities are expected to be equipped with a…
Direct imaging of extra-solar planets has now become a reality, especially with the deployment and commissioning of the first generation of specialized ground-based instruments such as the GPI, SPHERE, P1640 and SCExAO. These systems will…
High contrast imaging and spectroscopy provide unique constraints for exoplanet formation models as well as for planetary atmosphere models. But this can be challenging because of the planet-to-star small angular separation and high flux…
Wavefront stabilization is a fundamental challenge to high contrast imaging of exoplanets. For both space and ground observations, wavefront control performance is ultimately limited by the finite amount of starlight available for sensing,…
The direct detection and characterization of exoplanets will be a major scientific driver over the next decade, involving the development of very large telescopes and requires high-contrast imaging close to the optical axis. Some complex…
Several mission concepts are being studied to directly image planets around nearby stars. It is commonly thought that directly imaging a potentially habitable exoplanet around a Sun-like star requires space telescopes with apertures of at…
Space-based stellar coronagraph instruments aim to directly image exoplanets that are a fraction of an arcsecond separation and ten billion times fainter than their host star. To achieve this, one or more deformable mirrors (DMs) are used…
Direct imaging of extra-solar planets is now a reality, especially with the deployment and commissioning of the first generation of specialized ground-based instruments such as the Gemini Planet Imager and SPHERE. These systems will allow…
More than half of the stars in the solar neighborhood reside in binary/multiple stellar systems, and recent studies suggest that gas giant planets may be more abundant around binaries than single stars. Yet, these multiple systems are…
High contrast imaging (HCI) systems rely on active wavefront control (WFC) to deliver deep raw contrast in the focal plane, and on calibration techniques to further enhance contrast by identifying planet light within the residual speckle…
High-contrast imaging from space must overcome two major noise sources to successfully detect a terrestrial planet angularly close to its parent star: photon noise from diffracted star light, and speckle noise from star light scattered by…
Current and future high contrast imaging instruments aim to detect exoplanets at closer orbital separations, lower masses, and/or older ages than their predecessors. However, continually evolving speckles in the coronagraphic science image…
Direct imaging of exoplanets relies on complex wavefront sensing and control architectures. In addition to fast adaptive optics systems, most of the future high-contrast imaging instruments will soon be equipped with focal plane wavefront…