Related papers: VIPER: A high-resolution multimode fiber-fed VIPA …
Observations of circumstellar environments to look for the direct signal of exoplanets and the scattered light from disks has significant instrumental implications. In the past 15 years, major developments in adaptive optics, coronagraphy,…
High-resolution transmission spectroscopy is a method for understanding the chemical and physical properties of upper exoplanetary atmospheres. Due to large absorption cross-sections, resonance lines of atomic sodium D-lines (at 5889.95…
Comprehending the unique characteristics of structured ultrafast optical pulses is essential to the physics, applications and instrumentations of ultrafast lasers. However, full-vectrorial characterizations of the pulses remain challenging…
Context. Spectroscopy of exoplanet atmospheres at high resolving powers is rapidly gaining popularity to measure the presence of atomic and molecular species. While this technique is robust against contaminant absorption in the Earth's…
High-dispersion coronagraphy (HDC) optimally combines high contrast imaging techniques such as adaptive optics/wavefront control plus coronagraphy to high spectral resolution spectroscopy. HDC is a critical pathway towards fully…
(Abridged) The existence of an extended neutral hydrogen exosphere around small planets can be used as an evidence for the presence of water in their lower atmosphere but, to date, such feature has not been securely detected in rocky…
We introduce the RISTRETTO instrument for ESO VLT, an evolution from the original idea of connecting the SPHERE high-contrast facility to the ESPRESSO spectrograph (Lovis et al 2017). RISTRETTO is an independent, AO-fed spectrograph…
Optical spectroscopy is a fundamental tool in numerous areas of science and technology. Much effort has focused on miniaturizing spectrometers, but thus far at the cost of high spectral resolution and broad operating range. Here, we…
We report on the status of the Tierras Observatory, a refurbished 1.3-m ultra-precise fully-automated photometer located at the F. L. Whipple Observatory atop Mt. Hopkins, Arizona. Tierras is designed to limit systematic errors, notably…
Transiting exoplanets provide detailed access to their atmospheres, as the planet's signal can be effectively separated from that of its host star. For transiting exoplanets three fundamental atmospheric measurements are possible:…
The planetary mass and radius sensitivity of exoplanet discovery capabilities has reached into the terrestrial regime. The focus of such investigations is to search within the Habitable Zone where a modern Earth-like atmosphere may be a…
The 'holy grail' of exoplanet research today is the detection of an earth-like planet: a rocky planet in the habitable zone around a main-sequence star. Extremely precise Doppler spectroscopy is an indispensable tool to find and…
Transit spectroscopy is the most frequently used technique to reveal the atmospheric properties of exoplanets, while that at high resolution has the advantage to resolve the small Doppler shift of spectral lines, and the trace signal of the…
Atmospheric escape of planets on short orbital periods, driven by the host star's irradiation, influences their evolution, composition, and atmospheric dynamics. Our main avenue to probe atmospheric escape is through the near-infrared…
By varying the profiles of stellar extreme ultraviolet (EUV) spectral energy distribution (SED), we tested the influences of stellar EUV SEDs on the physical and chemical properties of the escaping atmosphere. We apply our model to study…
In our solar system, the densely cloud-covered atmosphere of Venus stands out as an example of how polarimetry can be used to gain information on cloud composition and particle mean radius. With current interest running high on discovering…
Observed exoplanet transit spectra are usually retrieved using 1D models to determine atmospheric composition while planetary atmospheres are 3D. With the JWST and future space telescopes such as Ariel, we will be able to obtain…
We searched for spectral signatures from the exosphere of HD209458 in the UV and the near-IR with UVES and ISAAC at the VLT. We looked in particular for the helium absorption feature at 10 830 \AA predicted to be among the strongest ones.…
We propose to use a high throughput and high precision multi-object dispersed fixed-delay interferometer for all sky Doppler surveys for extrasolar planets. This instrument, a combination of a fixed-delay interferometer with a moderate…
Using forward models for representative exoplanet atmospheres and a radiometric instrument model, we have generated synthetic observational data to explore how well the major C- and O-bearing chemical species (CO, CO2, CH4, and H2O),…