Related papers: RISTRETTO: a pathfinder instrument for exoplanet a…
X-shooter is the first 2nd generation instrument of the ESO Very Large Telescope(VLT). It is a very efficient, single-target, intermediate-resolution spectrograph that was installed at the Cassegrain focus of UT2 in 2009. The instrument…
Few spectra of directly-imaged exoplanets have been obtained in the mid-infrared (> 3 $\mu$m). This region is particularly rich in molecular spectral signatures, whose measurements can help recover atmospheric parameters and provide a…
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…
Spectra of exoplanet atmospheres provide us the opportunity to improve our understanding of these objects just as remote sensing in our own solar system has increased our understanding of the solar system bodies. The challenge is to…
The search for exoplanets is an active field in astronomy, with direct imaging as one of the most challenging methods due to faint exoplanet signals buried within stronger residual starlight. Successful detection requires advanced image…
Atmospheric profiling is a requirement for controlling wide-field Adaptive Optics (AO) instruments, analyzing the AO performance with respect to the observing conditions and predicting the Point Spread Function (PSF) spatial variations. We…
A dedicated mission to investigate exoplanetary atmospheres represents a major milestone in our quest to understand our place in the universe by placing our Solar System in context and by addressing the suitability of planets for the…
Recent progress in high-resolution transmission spectroscopy has offered new avenues in which to characterise the atmospheres of transiting exoplanets. High-resolution cross-correlation spectroscopy allows for the unambiguous detection of…
Combining high-contrast imaging with medium-resolution spectroscopy has been shown to significantly boost the direct detection of exoplanets. HARMONI, one of the first-light instruments to be mounted on ESO's ELT, will be equipped with a…
Current and future high contrast imaging instruments aim to detect exoplanets at closer orbital separations, lower masses, and/or older ages than their predecessors, with the eventual goal of directly detecting terrestrial-mass…
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…
We quantify the scientific potential for exoplanet imaging with the Mid-infrared E-ELT Imager and Spectrograph (METIS) foreseen as one of the instruments of the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). We focus on two main science cases:…
The planned launch of the James Webb Space Telescope in 2018 will herald a new era of exoplanet spectroscopy. JWST will be the first telescope sensitive enough to potentially characterize terrestrial planets from their transmission spectra.…
ESPRESSO is an extremely stable high-resolution spectrograph which is currently being developed for the ESO VLT. With its groundbreaking characteristics it is aimed to be a "science machine", i.e., a fully-integrated instrument to directly…
The best-characterized exoplanets to date are planets on close-in transiting orbits around their host stars. The high level of irradiation and transiting geometry of these objects make them ideal targets for atmospheric investigations.…
The detection and characterization of exoplanet atmospheres is currently one of the main drivers pushing the development of new observing facilities. In this context, high-resolution spectrographs are {proving} their potential and showing…
The far-IR spectral window plays host to a wide range of both spectroscopic and photometric diagnostics with which to open the protoplanetary disks and exoplanet research to wavelengths completely blocked by the Earth's atmosphere. These…
Direct imaging of widely separated exoplanets from space will obtain their reflected light spectra and measure atmospheric properties. Previous calculations have shown that a change in the orbital phase would cause a spectral signal, but…
The ESPRESSO spectrograph is a new powerful tool to detect and characterize extrasolar planets. Its design allows unprecedented radial velocity precision (down to a few tens of cm/s) and long-term thermo-mechanical stability. We present the…
X-ray observations of star-planet systems are important to grow our understanding of exoplanets; these observation allow for studies of photoevaporation of the exoplanetary atmosphere, and in some cases even estimations of the size of the…