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Directly imaging and characterizing Earth-like exoplanets is a tremendously difficult instrumental challenge. Present coronagraphic systems have yet to achieve the required $10^{-10}$ broadband contrast in a laboratory environment, but…
The architecture of exoplanetary systems is relatively well known inward to 1 AU thanks to indirect techniques, which have allowed characterization of thousands of exoplanet orbits, masses and sometimes radii. The next step is the…
More than half of the stars in the solar neighborhood reside in binary/multiple stellar systems, and recent studies suggest that gas giant planets may be more abundant around binaries than single stars. Yet, these multiple systems are…
Context. Direct imaging of exoplanets takes advantage of state-of-the-art adaptive optics (AO) systems, coronagraphy, and post-processing techniques. Coronagraphs attenuate starlight to mitigate the unfavorable flux ratio between an…
The realization that direct imaging of extrasolar planets could be technologically feasible within the next decade or so has inspired a great deal of recent research into high-contrast imaging. We ourselves have contributed several design…
We describe the design, laboratory manufacture, and on-sky testing of the grating vector apodizing phase plate (gvAPP) coronagraph for the Enhanced Resolution Imager and Spectrograph (ERIS) on the Very Large Telescope. We used both…
The Astro2020 decadal survey recommended an infrared, optical, ultra-violet (IR/O/UV) telescope with a $\sim$6~m inscribed diameter and equipped with a coronagraph instrument to directly image exoEarths in the habitable zone of their host…
We propose a class of graded coronagraphic "amplitude" image masks for a high throughput Lyot-type coronagraph that transmits light from an annular region around an extended source and suppresses light, with extremely high ratio, from…
Direct imaging of exoplanets is crucial for advancing our understanding of planetary systems beyond our solar system, but it faces significant challenges due to the high contrast between host stars and their planets. Wavefront aberrations…
Context. As a new growing field, exocartography aims to map the surface features of exoplanets that are beyond the resolution of traditional observing techniques. While photometric approaches have been discussed extensively, polarimetry has…
The Coronagraph Instrument (CGI) for NASA's Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) will constitute a dramatic step forward for high-contrast imaging, integral field spectroscopy, and polarimetry of exoplanets and circumstellar disks,…
Direct imaging of Earth-like planets is one of the main science cases for the next generation of extremely large telescopes. This is very challenging due to the star-planet contrast that must be overcome. Most current high-contrast imaging…
High performance coronagraphic imaging at small inner working angle requires efficient control of low order aberrations. The absence of accurate pointing control at small separation not only degrades coronagraph starlight rejection but also…
We present ground-based observations of the disk around the A-type star $\beta$ Pictoris to perform a close inspection of the inner disk morphology. Images were collected with NACO, the AO-assisted near-IR instrument on the VLT (ESO) which…
We present significant upgrades to the VAMPIRES instrument, a visible-light (600 nm to 800 nm) high-contrast imaging polarimeter integrated within SCExAO on the Subaru telescope. Key enhancements include new qCMOS detectors, coronagraphs,…
The Optimal Optical Coronagraph (OOC) Workshop held at the Lorentz Center in September 2017 in Leiden, the Netherlands, gathered a diverse group of 25 researchers working on exoplanet instrumentation to stimulate the emergence and sharing…
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…
We propose a method to detect exoplanets based on their host star's intensity centroid after it passes thru a vortex filter. Based on our calculations with planets in face-on orbits, exoplanets with relative proximity to their host stars…
Detection and characterization of exoplanets by direct imaging requires a coronagraph designed to deliver high contrast at small angular separation. To achieve this, an accurate control of low order aberrations, such as pointing and focus…
The detection of Earth-like exoplanets in the habitable zone of their stars, and their spectroscopic characterization in a search for biosignatures, requires starlight suppression that exceeds the current best ground-based performance by…