Related papers: System Analysis for a high-precision high-accuracy…
The varied and dynamic evolutionary histories of galaxies give rise to the stunning diversity in their properties that we observe in the present-day universe. HST, and now JWST, have pioneered the study of resolved individual stars in the…
The Habitable Exoplanet Observatory, or HabEx, has been designed to be the Great Observatory of the 2030s. For the first time in human history, technologies have matured sufficiently to enable an affordable space-based telescope mission…
The Astro2020 Decadal Survey declared that the baryon cycle is one of the top-priority science topics for current astrophysics. Space instruments with both high spectral resolution and high throughput in the ultraviolet are required for…
Precision astrometry at microarcsecond accuracy has application to a wide range of astrophysical problems. This paper is a study of the science questions that can be addressed using an instrument that delivers parallaxes at about 4…
The holy grail of exoplanet searches is an exo-Earth, an Earth mass planet in the habitable zone around a nearby star. Mass is the most important parameter of a planet and can only be measured by observing the motion of the star around the…
We present a new program aimed at developing a new generation of micromirror devices specifically tailored for astronomical applications, multi-slit spectroscopy in particular. We first overview the general characteristics of…
The proposed Habitable Worlds Observatory is intended to observe the atmospheres of nearby terrestrial exoplanets with a resolution greater than that of any previous instrument. While these observations present a substantial opportunity for…
We summarize the current best polychromatic (10 to 20 % bandwidth) contrast performance demonstrated in the laboratory by different starlight suppression approaches and systems designed to directly characterize exoplanets around nearby…
Astrometry can detect rocky planets in a broad range of masses and orbital distances and measure their masses and three-dimensional orbital parameters, including eccentricity and inclination, to provide the properties of terrestrial…
We advocate for the prioritization of high-precision photometric monitoring of exoplanet and brown dwarf companions to detect brightness variability arising from features in their atmospheres. Measurements of photometric variability provide…
Many planet candidates have been detected by radial velocity variations of the primary star; they are planet candidates, because of the unknown orbit inclination. Detection of the wobble in the two other dimensions, to be measured by…
We present our search program for substellar companions using high-precision relative astronomy. Due to its orbital motion around the star, an unseen substellar companion would produce a periodic "wobble" of the host star, which is the…
Photometric measurements allow the determination of an asteroid's absolute magnitude, which often represents the sole means to infer its size. Photometric observations can be obtained in a variety of filters that can be unique to a specific…
We present new astrometric measurements from our ongoing monitoring campaign of the HR 8799 directly imaged planetary system. These new data points were obtained with NIRC2 on the W.M. Keck II 10 meter telescope between 2009 and 2014. In…
The search for Earth-like exoplanets requires high-contrast and high-angular resolution instruments, which designs can be very complex: they need an adaptive optics system to compensate for the effect of the atmospheric turbulence on image…
The U.S. Naval Observatory Robotic Astrometric Telescope (URAT) project aims at a highly accurate (5 mas), ground-based, all-sky survey. Requirements are presented for the optics and telescope for this 0.85 m aperture, 4.5 degree diameter…
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…
Sky survey telescopes and powerful targeted telescopes play complementary roles in astronomy. In order to investigate the nature and characteristics of the motions of very faint objects, a flexibly-pointed instrument capable of high…
I present a review of astrometric techniques and instrumentation utilized to search for, detect, and characterize extra-solar planets. First, I briefly summarize the properties of the present-day sample of extrasolar planets, in connection…
The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) aims to telescopically constrain the frequency and abundance of biospheres in the solar neighborhood. Origin-of-life theories vary in their predictions for the environmental requirements and the…