Related papers: The SPHERE infrared survey for exoplanets (SHINE)-…
Over the past five years, radial-velocity and transit techniques have revealed a new population of Earth-like planets with masses of a few Earth masses. Their very close orbit around their host star requires an exquisite inner working angle…
Context. High-contrast imaging is currently the only available technique for the study of the thermodynamical and compositional properties of exoplanets in long-period orbits. The SPICES project is a coronagraphic space telescope dedicated…
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…
We are studying the influence of stellar multiplicity on exoplanet systems, in particular systems that have been detected via radial-velocity searches. We are in particular interested in the closest companions as they would have a strong…
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…
The consortium of the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch installed at the Very Large Telescope (SPHERE/VLT) has been operating its guaranteed observation time (260 nights over five years) since February 2015. The main…
Direct imaging surveys for exoplanets commonly exclude binary stars from their target lists, leaving a large part of the overall planet demography unexplored. To address this gap in our understanding of planet formation and evolution, we…
Direct imaging is the primary technique currently used to detect young and warm exoplanets and understand their formation scenarios. The extreme flux ratio between an exoplanet and its host star requires the use of coronagraphs to attenuate…
Spatially resolving the immediate surroundings of young stars is a key challenge for the planet formation community. SPHERE on the VLT represents an important step forward by increasing the opportunities offered by optical or near-infrared…
SPHERE (Spectro Polarimetric High contrast Exoplanet REsearch), the planet finder instrument for the VLT is designed to study relatively bright extrasolar giant planets around young or nearby stars. SPHERE is a set of three instruments fed…
In the last decade, about a dozen giant exoplanets have been directly imaged in the IR as companions to young stars. With photometry and spectroscopy of these planets in hand from new extreme coronagraphic instruments such as SPHERE at VLT…
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.…
Exoplanet research has shown an incessant growth since the first claim of a hot giant planet around a solar-like star in the mid-1990s. Today, the new facilities are working to spot the first habitable rocky planets around low-mass stars as…
We present observations with the planet finder SPHERE of a selected sample of the most promising radial velocity (RV) companions for high-contrast imaging. Using a Monte Carlo simulation to explore all the possible inclinations of the orbit…
Various structures are visible within Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch instrument (SPHERE) images that are not always straightforward to interpret. In this article we present a review of these features and demonstrate…
We present first results from a new exoplanet direct imaging survey being carried out with the Subaru Coronagraphic Extreme Adaptive Optics project (SCExAO) coupled to the CHARIS integral field spectrograph and assisted with Keck/NIRC2,…
High-precision astrometry at the sub-microarcsecond level opens up a window to study Earth-like planets in the habitable zones of Sun-like stars, and to determine their masses. It thus promises to play an important role in exoplanet science…
The SIRTF Wide-area Infrared Extragalactic (SWIRE) survey is a "Legacy Program" using 851 hours of SIRTF observing time to conduct a set of large-area (67 sq. deg. split into 7 fields) high Galactic latitude imaging surveys, achieving…
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…
One of the most remarkable properties of massive stars is that almost all of them are found in binaries or higher-order multiple systems. Observations that cover the full companion mass ratio and separation regime are essential to constrain…