Related papers: Implementing focal-plane phase masks optimized for…
The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) mission will require coronagraphs capable of suppressing starlight at the $\sim 10^{-10}$ contrast level to directly image exo-Earths. High contrast achromatic coronagraphic masks are the missing…
General arguments for optimized coronagraphy in the search for planets are presented. First, off-axis telescopes provide the best telescopic platforms for use with coronagraphy, and telescope fabrication technology now allows the…
Oncoming exoplanet spectro-imagers like the Planetary Camera and Spectrograph (PCS) for the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) will aim for a new class of exoplanets, including Earth-like planets evolving around M dwarfs i.e., closer than…
Imaging planets in reflected light, a key focus of future NASA missions and ELTs, requires advanced wavefront control to maintain a deep, temporally correlated null of stellar halo -- i.e. a dark hole -- at just several diffraction beam…
The WFIRST-AFTA 2.4 m telescope will provide in the next decade the opportunity to host a coronagraph for the imaging and spectroscopy of planets and disks. The telescope, however, is not ideal, given its obscured aperture. Only recently…
Space-based coronagraphs for future earth-like planet detection will require focal plane wavefront control techniques to achieve the necessary contrast levels. These correction algorithms are iterative and the control methods require an…
At present, the principal limitation on the resolution and contrast of astronomical imaging instruments comes from aberrations in the optical path, which may be imposed by the Earth's turbulent atmosphere or by variations in the alignment…
We compare coronagraph concepts and investigate their behavior and suitability for planet finder projects with Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs, 30-42 meters class telescopes). For this task, we analyze the impact of major error sources…
The increasing complexity of the aperture geometry of the future space- and ground based-telescopes will limit the performance of the next generation of coronagraphic instruments for high contrast imaging of exoplanets. We propose here a…
As adaptive optics technology continues to improve, the stellar coronagraph will play an ever increasing role in ground-based high-contrast imaging observations. Though several different image masks exist for the most common type of…
An ideal coronagraph with a band-limited image mask can efficiently image off-axis sources while removing identically all of the light from an on-axis source. However, strict mask construction tolerances limit the utility of this technique…
Second-generation exoplanet imagers using extreme adaptive optics and coronagraphy have demonstrated their great potential for studying close circumstellar environments and for detecting new companions and helping to understand their…
Imaging faint objects, such as exoplanets or disks, around nearby stars is extremely challenging because host star images are dominated by the telescope diffraction pattern. Using a coronagraph is an efficient solution for removing…
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…
Potentially habitable planets around nearby stars less massive than solar-type stars could join targets of the spectroscopy of the planetary reflected light with future space telescopes. However, the orbits of most of these planets occur…
We performed an experimental verification of a coronagraph. As a result, we confirmed that, at the focal region where the planetary point spread function exists, the coronagraph system mitigates the raw contrast of a star-planet system by…
The optical vortex coronagraph (OVC) is one of the promising ways for direct imaging exoplanets because of its small inner working angle and high throughput. This paper presents the design and laboratory demonstration performance at 633nm…
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…
Imaging the planets that orbit around other stars requires blocking the host star which is usually 8-10 orders of magnitude brighter than the planets. This is achieved with the help of a stellar coronagraph. In the current work, a concept…
Exoplanetary science is a very active field of astronomy nowadays, with questions still opened such as how planetary systems form and evolve (occurrence, process), why such a diversity of exoplanets is observed (mass, radius, orbital…