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With the recent commissioning of ground instruments such as SPHERE or GPI and future space observatories like WFIRST-AFTA, coronagraphy should probably become the most efficient tool for identifying and characterizing extra-solar planets in…

Future searches for biomarkers on habitable exoplanets will rely on telescope instruments that achieve extremely high contrast at small planet-to-star angular separations. Coronagraphy is a promising starlight suppression technique,…

Stellar coronagraph performance is highly sensitive to optical aberrations. In order to effectively suppress starlight for exoplanet imaging applications, low-order wavefront aberrations entering a coronagraph such as tip-tilt, defocus and…

High-contrast imaging observations of large angular diameter stars enable complementary science questions to be addressed compared to the baseline goals of proposed missions like the Terrestrial Planet Finder-Coronagraph, New World's…

We conducted a number of multi-band coronagraph experiments using a vacuum chamber and a binary-shaped pupil mask which in principle should work at all wavelengths, in the context of the research and development on a coronagraph to observe…

The vortex coronagraph is an optical instrument that precisely removes on-axis starlight allowing for high contrast imaging at small angular separation from the star, thereby providing a crucial capability for direct detection and…

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST)/Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) contains the only currently operating coronagraph in space that is not trained on the Sun. In an era of extreme--adaptive-optics--fed coronagraphs, and with the…

We describe the coronagraphic upgrade underway for the Mid-Infrared Array Camera-5 (MIRAC-5) to be used with the 6.5-m MMT telescope utilizing the new MMT Adaptive optics exoPlanet characterization System (MAPS). Mid-IR ground-based…

A high contrast coronagraph is expected to provide one of the promising ways to directly observe extra-solar planets. We present the newest results of our laboratory experiment investigating "rigid" coronagraph with a binary shaped…

A coronagraphic starlight suppression system situated on a future flagship space observatory offers a promising avenue to image Earth-like exoplanets and search for biomarkers in their atmospheric spectra. One NASA mission concept that…

We propose 730 nm high-contrast spectroscopic observations of selected self-luminous directly-imaged planets as a key test of the Roman Coronagraph's planet characterization capabilities. The planet sample draws from ground-based IR…

We describe a new instrument that forms the core of a long-term high contrast imaging program at the 200-inch Hale Telescope at Palomar Observatory. The primary scientific thrust is to obtain images and low-resolution spectroscopy of brown…

We present the results of the first laboratory experiment of checkerboard shaped pupil binary mask coronagraphs using visible light, in the context of the R&D activities for future mid-infrared space missions such as the 3.5 m SPICA…

Diluted arrays of many optical apertures will be able to provide h igh-resolution snapshot images if the beams are combined according to the densified-pupil scheme. We show that the same principle can also provide coronagraphic images, for…

Instrumentation techniques in the field of direct imaging of exoplanets have greatly advanced over the last two decades. Two of the four NASA-commissioned large concept studies involve a high-contrast instrument for the imaging and spectral…

The high-contrast coronagraph for direct imaging earth-like exoplanet at the visible needs a contrast of 10^(-10) at a small angular separation of 4 lambda/D or less. Here we report our recent laboratory experiment that is close to the…

In the two decades since the first extra-solar planet was discovered, the detection and characterization of extra-solar planets has become one of the key endeavors in all of modern science. Recently direct detection techniques such as…

We have designed and built the first band-limited coronagraphic mask used for ground-based high-contrast imaging observations. The mask resides in the focal plane of the near-infrared camera PHARO at the Palomar Hale telescope and receives…

The Optimal Optical Coronagraph (OOC) Workshop 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 of new…

Future large space- or ground-based telescopes will offer the resolution and sensitivity to probe the habitable zone of a large sample of nearby stars for exo-Earth imaging. To this end, such facilities are expected to be equipped with a…