Related papers: Discovery space and science with the PLACID stella…

Earlier apodized-pupil Lyot coronagraphs (APLC) have been studied and developed to enable high-contrast imaging for exoplanet detection and characterization with present-day ground-based telescopes. With the current interest in the…

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Coronagraph Instrument will enable the polarimetric imaging of debris disks and inner dust belts in the optical and near-infrared wavelengths, in addition to the high-contrast polarimetric imaging and…

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…

High-contrast imaging will be a challenge for future ELTs, because their vibrations create low-order aberrations - mostly tip/tilt - that reduce coronagraphic performances at 1.2 lambda/D and above. A Low-Order WaveFront Sensor (LOWFS) is…

Polarization aberrations originating from the telescope and high-contrast imaging instrument optics introduce polarization-dependent speckles and associated errors in the image plane, affecting the measured exoplanet signal. Understanding…

Circumstellar environments are now routinely observed by dedicated high-contrast imagers on large, ground-based observatories. These facilities combine extreme adaptive optics and coronagraphy to achieve unprecedented sensitivities for…

Astrophotonics lies at the interface of astronomy and photonics. This burgeoning field -- now formally recognized by the optics community -- has emerged over the past decade in response to the increasing demands of astronomical…

We discuss the results of a multi-wavelength differential imaging lab experiment with the High Contrast Imaging Testbed (HCIT) at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The HCIT combines a Lyot coronagraph with a Xinetics deformable mirror in a…

Discovery of pulsars is one of the main goals for large radio telescopes. The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), that incorporates an L-band 19-beam receiver with a system temperature of about 20~K, is the most…

For diffraction-limited optical systems an accurate physical optics model is necessary to properly evaluate instrument performance. Astronomical observatories outfitted with coronagraphs for direct exoplanet imaging require physical optics…

The detection and characterisation of extra-solar planets is a major theme driving modern astronomy, with the vast majority of such measurements being achieved by Doppler radial-velocity and transit observations. Another technique -- direct…

Empirical studies of the first generation of stars and quasars in the Universe will likely become feasible over the next decade. The Next Generation Space Telescope will provide direct imaging and photometry of sub-galactic objects at…

Extreme wavefront correction is required for coronagraphs on future space telescopes to reach 1e-8 or better starlight suppression for the direct imaging and characterization of exoplanets in reflected light. Thus, a suite of wavefront…

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,…

The final performance of current and future instruments dedicated to exoplanet detection and characterization (such as SPHERE on the European Very Large Telescope, GPI on Gemini North, or future instruments on Extremely Large Telescopes) is…

The two main advantages of exoplanet imaging are the discovery of objects in the outer part of stellar systems -- constraining models of planet formation --, and its ability to spectrally characterize the planets -- information on their…

Coronagraphs of the apodized pupil and shaped pupil varieties use the Fraunhofer diffraction properties of amplitude masks to create regions of high contrast in the vicinity of a target star. Here we present a hybrid coronagraph…

Context. In the context of direct imaging of exoplanets, coronagraphs are commonly proposed to reach the required very high contrast levels. However, wavefront aberrations induce speckles in their focal plane and limit their performance.…

The raw coronagraphic performance of current high-contrast imaging instruments is limited by the presence of a quasi-static speckle (QSS) background, resulting from instrumental non-common path errors (NCPEs). Rapid development of efficient…

We report on the results of a new, sealed, Gas Pixel Detector. The very compact design and the absence of the gas flow system, make this detector substantially ready for use as focal plane detector for future X-ray space telescopes. The…