Related papers: A Visible-light Lyot Coronagraph for SCExAO/VAMPIR…
To directly detect exoplanets and protoplanetary disks, the development of high accuracy wavefront sensing and control (WFS&C) technologies is essential, especially for ground-based Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs). The Subaru…
The exoplanetary science through direct imaging and spectroscopy will largely expand with the forthcoming development of new instruments at the VLT (SPHERE), Gemini (GPI), Subaru (HiCIAO), and Palomar (Project 1640) observatories. All these…
Of the over 5000 exoplanets that have been detected, only about a dozen have ever been directly imaged. Earth-like exoplanets are on the order of 10 billion times fainter than their host star in visible and near-infrared, requiring a…
Santa Cruz Array of Lenslets for Exoplanet Spectroscopy (SCALES) is an instrument being designed for direct imaging of exoplanets in the infrared with the Adaptive Optics System of the W.M. Keck Observatory. The performance of SCALES will…
Despite promising astrometric signals, to date there has been no success in direct imaging of a hypothesized third member of the Sirius system. Using the Clio instrument and MagAO adaptive optics system on the Magellan Clay 6.5 m telescope,…
Here we review the current optical mechanical design of MagAO-X. The project is post-PDR and has finished the design phase. The design presented here is the baseline to which all the optics and mechanics have been fabricated. The…
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 technological progress in spatial-light modulators (SLM) technology has made it possible to use those devices as programmable active focal-plane phase coronagraphic masks, opening the door to novel versatile and adaptive high-contrast…
In recent years, new coronagraphic schemes have been proposed, the most promising being the optical vortex phase mask coronagraphs. In our work, a new scheme of broadband optical scalar vortex coronagraph is proposed and characterized…
The Slicer Combined with Array of Lenslets for Exoplanet Spectroscopy (SCALES) is an instrument being designed to perform direct imaging of exoplanets in the mid-infrared (2-5 {\mu}m) with the Adaptive Optics System of W.M. Keck…
We report on the performance of a vector apodizing phase plate coronagraph that operates over a wavelength range of $2-5 \mu$m and is installed in MagAO/Clio2 at the 6.5 m Magellan Clay telescope at Las Campanas Observatory, Chile. The…
Direct observation of extra-solar planets (exoplanets) is essential to understand how planetary systems were born, how they evolve, and ultimately, to identify biological signatures on these planets. However, the enormous contrast in flux…
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…
In a previous paper, we discussed an original solution to improve the performances of coronagraphs by adding, in the optical scheme, an adaptive hologram removing most of the residual speckle starlight. In our simulations, the detection…
Coronagraphy is a powerful technique to achieve high contrast imaging and hence to image faint companions around bright targets. Various concepts have been used in the visible and near-infrared regimes, while coronagraphic applications in…
High contrast imaging is the primary path to the direct detection and characterization of Earth-like planets around solar-type stars; a cleverly designed internal coronagraph suppresses the light from the star, revealing the elusive…
Non-common path quasi-static and differential aberrations are one of the big hurdles of direct imaging for current and future high-contrast imaging instruments. They increase speckle and photon noise thus reducing the achievable contrast…
Specific high contrast imaging instruments are mandatory to characterize circumstellar disks and exoplanets around nearby stars. Coronagraphs are commonly used in these facilities to reject the diffracted light of an observed star and…
Modern coronagraph design relies on advanced, large-scale optimization processes that require an ever increasing amount of computational resources. In this paper, we restrict ourselves to the design of Apodized Pupil Lyot Coronagraphs…
We present a status update for MagAO-X, a 2000 actuator, 3.6 kHz adaptive optics and coronagraph system for the Magellan Clay 6.5 m telescope. MagAO-X is optimized for high contrast imaging at visible wavelengths. Our primary science goals…