Related papers: Setting the Stage for the Planet Formation Imager
Direct imaging instruments have the spatial resolution to resolve exoplanets from their host star. This enables direct characterization of the exoplanets atmosphere, but most direct imaging instruments do not have spectrographs with high…
We summarize the status of our program of near-infrared adaptive optics observations of ultracompact HII regions. By means of selected results we demonstrate the usefulness of this technique for disentangling the complexity of massive…
The Stellar Imager mission concept is a space-based UV/Optical interferometer designed to resolve surface magnetic activity and subsurface structure and flows of a population of Sun-like stars, in order to accelerate the development and…
When the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) was conceived and its first science cases defined, exoplanets had not been detected. Later studies, however, showed that optical and near-infrared photometric and…
Understanding the atmospheres of exoplanets is a milestone to decipher their formation history and potential habitability. High-contrast imaging and spectroscopy of exoplanets is the major pathway towards the goal. Directly imaging of an…
The dispersed fixed-delay interferometer (DFDI) represents a new instrument concept for high-precision radial velocity (RV) surveys for extrasolar planets. A combination of Michelson interferometer and medium-resolution spectrograph, it has…
SPHERE is an instrument designed and built by a consortium of French, German, Italian, Swiss and Dutch institutes in collaboration with ESO. The project is currently in its Phase B. The main goal of SPHERE is to gain at least one order of…
The study of protoplanetary disks, where the planets are believed to form, will certainly allow the formation of our Solar System to be understood. To conduct observations of these objects at the milli-arcsecond scale, infrared…
We present an overview of SPICA, the Space Infrared Telescope for Cosmology and Astrophysics, a world-class space observatory optimized for mid- and far-IR astronomy (from 5 to ~210um) with a cryogenically cooled ~3.2m telescope (<6 K). Its…
Characterising the circumstellar dust around nearby main sequence stars is a necessary step in understanding the planetary formation process and is crucial for future life-finding space missions such as ESA's Darwin or NASA's Terrestrial…
Direct detection, also known as direct imaging, is a method for discovering and characterizing the atmospheres of planets at intermediate and wide separations. It is the only means of obtaining spectra of non-transiting exoplanets.…
The Keck Planet Imager and Characterizer (KPIC) is an upgrade to the Keck II adaptive optics system and instrument suite with the goal of improving direct imaging and high-resolution spectroscopic characterization capabilities for giant…
FORUM (Far-infrared Outgoing Radiation Understanding and Monitoring) was selected in 2019 as the ninth Earth Explorer mission by the European Space Agency (ESA). Its primary objective is to collect interferometric measurements in the…
Observations of extrasolar planets using Integral Field Spectroscopy (IFS), if coupled with an extreme Adaptive Optics system and analyzed with a Simultaneous Differential Imaging technique (SDI), are a powerful tool to detect and…
Over the past two decades, photonics have been developed as technological solutions for astronomical instrumentation for, e.g., near-infrared spectroscopy and long baseline interferometry. With increasing instrument capabilities, large…
The thermal emission of dust is one of the most important tracers of the interstellar medium: multi-wavelength photometry in the far-infrared (FIR) and submillimeter (submm) can be fitted with a model, providing estimates of the dust mass.…
The understanding of planet formation has changed recently, embracing the new idea of pebble accretion. This means that the influx of pebbles from the outer regions of planet-forming disks to their inner zones could determine the…
I present a discussion of fundamental stellar parameters and their observational determination in the context of interferometric measurements with current and future optical/infrared interferometric facilities. Stellar parameters and the…
Imaging the direct light signal from a faint exoplanet against the overwhelming glare of its host star presents one of the fundamental challenges to modern astronomical instrumentation. Achieving sufficient signal-to-noise for detection by…
In this paper, we review the various ways in which an infrared stellar interferometer can be used to perform direct detection of extrasolar planetary systems. We first review the techniques based on classical stellar interferometry, where…