Related papers: SPHERE+: Imaging young Jupiters down to the snowli…

We aim at searching for exoplanets on the whole ESO/VLT-SPHERE archive with improved and unsupervised data analysis algorithm that could allow to detect massive giant planets at 5 au. To prepare, test and optimize our approach, we gathered…

The new planet finder for the Very Large Telescope (VLT), the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE), just had its first light in Paranal. A dedicated instrument for the direct detection of planets, SPHERE, is…

Context. Since 1995 and the first discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a main-sequence star, 4000 exoplanets have been discovered using several techniques. However, only a few of these exoplanets were detected through direct imaging. Indeed,…

The SHINE project is a 500-star survey performed with SPHERE on the VLT for the purpose of directly detecting new substellar companions and understanding their formation and early evolution. Here we present an initial statistical analysis…

New generation exoplanet imagers on large ground-based telescopes are highly optimised for the detection of young giant exoplanets in the near-infrared, but they are intrinsically limited for their characterisation by the low spectral…

CONTEXT. Little is known about the planetary systems around single white dwarfs although there is strong evidence that they do exist. AIMS. We performed a pilot study with the extreme-AO system on the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast…

Until now, just a few extrasolar planets (~30 out of 860) have been found through the direct imaging method. This number should greatly improve when the next generation of High Contrast Instruments like Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) at Gemini…

I present spherical (https://github.com/m-samland/spherical), a software package and database designed for the ESO VLT/SPHERE high-contrast imager. SPHERE has produced the world's largest archive of direct imaging observations of exoplanets…

The detection and characterization of extrasolar planets with SPHERE (Spectro Polarimetric High contrast Exoplanet REsearch) is challenging and in particular relies on the ability of a coronagraph to attenuate the diffracted starlight.…

The search for extrasolar planets has driven rapid advances in instrumentation, resulting in cameras such as SPHERE at the VLT, GPI at Gemini South and SCExAO at Subaru, capable of achieving very high contrast ($\sim10^{6}$) around bright…

SPHERE, operating at the VLT since 2014, is currently one of the high-contrast instruments with a higher performance. Its adaptive optics system, known as SAXO, will be upgraded to SAXO+, which features the addition of a second stage of…

A major endeavor of this decade is the direct characterization of young giant exoplanets at high spectral resolution to determine the composition of their atmosphere and infer their formation processes and evolution. Such a goal represents…

Unbiased surveys of large stellar samples are the prime means through which the prevalence of exoplanets can be derived, and crucial constraints to planet formation models can be set. Direct imaging (DI) is ideally positioned to probe the…

While a large fraction of the stars are in multiple systems, our understanding of the processes leading to the formation of these systems is still inadequate. Given the large theoretical uncertainties, observation plays a basic role. Here…

SAXO+ is a planned enhancement of the existing SAXO, the VLT/ SPHERE adaptive optics system, deployed on ESO's Very Large Telescope. This upgrade is designed to significantly enhance the instrument's capacity to detect and analyze young…

The direct imaging from the ground of extrasolar planets has become today a major astronomical and biological focus. This kind of imaging requires simultaneously the use of a dedicated high performance Adaptive Optics [AO] system and a…

HR8799 is orbited by at least four giant planets, making it a prime target for the recently commissioned Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (VLT/SPHERE). As such, it was observed on five consecutive nights during the…

We present the current results of the astrometric characterization of the VLT planet finder SPHERE over 2 years of on-sky operations. We first describe the criteria for the selection of the astrometric fields used for calibrating the…

The primary goal of this thesis was the correction of Non-Common-Path-Aberrations in the SPHERE instrument for helping it meeting its contrast requirements. SPHERE's purpose is the search and characterization of giant exo-planets around…

SPICES (Spectro-Polarimetric Imaging and Characterization of Exoplanetary Systems) is a five-year M-class mission proposed to ESA Cosmic Vision. Its purpose is to image and characterize long-period extrasolar planets and circumstellar disks…