Related papers: Developing Linear Dark-Field Control for Exoplanet…

Direct imaging of exoplanets or circumstellar disk material requires extreme contrast at the 10-6 to 10-12 levels at < 100 mas angular separation from the star. Focal-plane mask (FPM) coronagraphic imaging has played a key role in this…

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…

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…

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…

A new generation of telescopes with mirror diameters of 20 m or more, called extremely large telescopes (ELTs) has the potential to provide unprecedented imaging and spectroscopy of exo-planetary systems, if the difficulties in achieving…

The Magellan extreme adaptive optics (MagAO-X) instrument is a new extreme adaptive optics (ExAO) system designed for operation in the visible to near-IR which will deliver high contrast-imaging capabilities. The main AO system will be…

Future direct imaging missions will primarily observe planets that have been previously detected, mostly via the radial velocity (RV) technique, to characterize planetary atmospheres. In the meantime, direct imaging may discover new planets…

The characterization of exoplanet atmospheres using direct imaging spectroscopy requires high-contrast over a wide wavelength range. We study a recently proposed focal plane wavefront estimation algorithm that exclusively uses broadband…

High-Performance Adaptive Optics systems are rapidly spreading as useful applications in the fields of astronomy, ophthalmology, and telecommunications. This technology is critical to enable coronagraphic direct imaging of exoplanets…

Future high-contrast imagers on ground-based extremely large telescopes will have to deal with the segmentation of the primary mirrors. Residual phase errors coming from the phase steps at the edges of the segments will have to be minimized…

The continual push to directly image exoplanets at lower masses and closer separations orbiting around bright stars remains limited by both quasi-static and residual adaptive optics (AO) aberration. In previous papers we have proposed a…

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…

For direct imaging of exoplanets, Scalar Vortex Coronagraphs (SVCs) are an attractive alternative to the popularly used Vector Vortex Coronagraphs (VVCs). This is primarily because they are able to induce the same phase ramp regardless of…

Coronagraphs allow for faint off-axis exoplanets to be observed, but are limited to angular separations greater than a few beam widths. Accessing closer-in separations would greatly increase the expected number of detectable planets, which…

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…

In the context of extrasolar planet direct detection, we evaluated the performance of differential imaging with ground-based telescopes. This study was carried out in the framework of the VLT-Planet Finder project and is further extended to…

Exoplanet direct imaging allows us to directly probe and characterize an exoplanet's atmosphere, searching for signs of life in its atmospheric signatures. Directly imaging an Earth-like planet around a Sun-like star requires reaching…

Detecting exoplanets and other faint sources of emitted and reflected light near a bright star requires deeply suppressing the starlight while efficiently transmitting the dim light from its surroundings. This suppression can be carried out…

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…

Direct imaging of exoplanets requires the detection of very faint objects orbiting close to very bright stars. In this context, the SPICES mission was proposed to the European Space Agency for planet characterization at visible wavelength.…