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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,…
Microlens parallax measurements combining space-based and ground-based observatories can be used to study planetary demographics. In recent years, the Spitzer Space Telescope was used as a microlens parallax satellite. Meanwhile,…
We present a new high-contrast imaging testbed designed to provide complete solutions in wavefront sensing, control and starlight suppression with complex aperture telescopes. The testbed was designed to enable a wide range of studies of…
For the technology development of the mission EXCEDE (EXoplanetary Circumstellar Environments and Disk Explorer) - a 0.7 m telescope equipped with a Phase-Induced Amplitude Apodization Coronagraph (PIAA-C) and a 2000-element MEMS deformable…
Gaussian aperture pupil masks (GAPMs) can in theory achieve the contrast requisite for directly imaging an extrasolar planet around a nearby solar type star. We outline the process of designing, fabricating, and testing a GAPM for use on…
Extrasolar planets observation and characterization by high contrast imaging instruments is set to be a very important subject in observational astronomy. Dedicated instruments are being developed to achieve this goal with very high…
Extreme adaptive optics systems are now in operation across the globe. These systems, capable of high order wavefront correction, deliver Strehl ratios of 90% in the near-infrared. Originally intended for the direct imaging of exoplanets,…
The next generation of exoplanet space photometry missions proposed by both NASA and ESA promise to discover small transiting planets around the nearest and brightest main-sequence stars. The physical and rotational properties of these…
A space telescope capable of high-contrast imaging has been recognized as the avenue toward finding terrestrial planets around nearby Sun-like stars and characterizing their potential habitability. It is thus essential to quantify the…
Stellar microlensing is a powerful method to constrain compact dark matter models, uncover binary stars, and exoplanets during caustic crossing events. At cosmological distances, {\it James-Webb Space Telescope} ({\it JWST}) is routinely…
Imaging exo-Earths is an exciting but challenging task because of the 10^-10 contrast ratio between these planets and their host star at separations narrower than 100 mas. Large segmented aperture space telescopes enable the sensitivity…
The study of the magnification bias produced on high-redshift sub-millimetre galaxies by foreground galaxies through the analysis of the cross-correlation function was recently demonstrated as an interesting independent alternative to the…
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…
Stellar contamination has long been recognized as a major bottleneck in transmission spectroscopy, limiting our ability to accurately characterize exoplanet atmospheres-particularly for terrestrial worlds. In response, significant…
High precision measurements of stellar spectroscopic line profiles and their changes over time contain very valuable information about the physics of the stellar photosphere (stellar activity) and can be used to characterize extrasolar…
Euclid is a space telescope currently developed in the framework of the ESA Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 Program. It addresses fundamental cosmological questions related to dark matter and dark energy. The lens system of one of the two…
The dark-speckle method (Labeyrie 1995) combines features of speckle interferometry and adaptive optics to provide images of faint circumstellar material. We present preliminary results of observations, and simulations concluding to the…
We present a comparison between the SCUBA Half Degree Extragalactic Survey (SHADES) at 450 and 850 microns in the Lockman Hole East with a deep Spitzer Space Telescope survey at 3.6-24 microns conducted in Guaranteed Time. Using stacking…
I propose a spatial-mode demultiplexing (SPADE) measurement scheme for the far-field imaging of spatially incoherent optical sources. For any object too small to be resolved by direct imaging under the diffraction limit, I show that SPADE…
By using scattering in near field techniques, a microscope can be easily turned into a device measuring static and dynamic light scattering, very useful for the characterization of nanoparticle dispersions. Up to now, microscopy based…