Related papers: Non Common Path Aberrations Correction
Current and future high contrast imaging instruments aim to detect exoplanets at closer orbital separations, lower masses, and/or older ages than their predecessors. However, continually evolving speckles in the coronagraphic science image…
We have developed a new method to improve the transit detection of Earth-sized planets in front of solar-like stars by fitting stellar microvariability by means of a spot model. A large Monte Carlo numerical experiment has been designed to…
Observations of stellar surfaces - except for the Sun - are hampered by their tiny angular extent, while observed spectral lines are smeared by averaging over the stellar surface, and by stellar rotation. Exoplanet transits can be used to…
The characterization of exoplanet atmospheres using direct imaging spectroscopy requires high-contrast over a wide wavelength range. We study a recently proposed focal plane wavefront estimation algorithm that exclusively uses broadband…
High-contrast imaging surveys for exoplanet detection have shown giant planets at large separations to be rare. It is important to push towards detections at smaller separations, the part of the parameter space containing most planets. The…
We investigate methods to calibrate the non-common path aberrations at an adaptive optics system having a wavefront-correcting device working at an extremely high resolution (larger than 150x150). We use focal-plane images collected…
Spectroscopic studies of planets outside of our own solar system provide some of the most crucial information about their formation, evolution, and atmospheric properties. In ground-based spectroscopy, the process of extracting the planet's…
So far, most of the about 5700 exoplanets have been discovered mainly with radial velocity and transit methods. These techniques are sensitive to planets in close orbits, not being able to probe large star--planet separations. $\mu$-lensing…
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…
In the era of photometry with space-based telescopes, such as CHEOPS (CHaracterizing ExOPlanets Satellite), JWST (James Webb Space Telescope), PLATO (PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars), and ARIEL (Atmospheric Remote-sensing…
While high-resolution cross-correlation spectroscopy (HRCCS) techniques have proven effective at characterizing the atmospheres of transiting and non-transiting hot Jupiters, the limitations of these techniques are not well understood. We…
This thesis focuses on the detection of extrasolar planets via the transit method, and more specifically addresses issues relevant to the preparation of upcoming space missions such as CoRoT, Kepler, Eddington, aiming to detect terrestrial…
Direct imaging and spectral characterization of exoplanets using extreme adaptive optics (ExAO) is a key science goal of future extremely large telescopes and space observatories. However, quasi-static wavefront errors will limit the…
The STARE instrument is a small aperture, wide-field, CCD-based telescope that delivers high cadence time series photometry on roughly 40,000 stars in a typical field centered on the galactic plane. In a two-month observing run on a field,…
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is conducting a two-year wide-field survey searching for transiting exoplanets around nearby bright stars that will be ideal for follow-up characterization. To facilitate studies of planet…
Space-based high contrast imaging mission concepts for studying rocky exoplanets in reflected light are currently under community study. We develop an inverse modeling framework to estimate the science return of such missions given…
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…
Effective image post-processing algorithms are vital for the successful direct imaging of exoplanets. Standard PSF subtraction methods use techniques based on a low-rank approximation to separate the rotating planet signal from the…
Transit spectroscopy is a powerful tool to decode the chemical composition of the atmospheres of extrasolar planets. In this paper we focus on unsupervised techniques for analyzing spectral data from transiting exoplanets. We demonstrate…
We introduce a new time-series analysis strategy for combined-light exoplanet spectroscopic phase curves called the Variable Planetary Infrared Excess (VPIE) method. VPIE can be used to extract information about the planetary flux…