Related papers: Efficient Exoplanet Imaging Simulations of the Hab…
A star's luminosity increases as it evolves along the Main Sequence (MS), which inevitably results in a higher surface temperature for planets in orbit around the star. Technologically advanced civilizations may tackle this issue by…
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…
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…
Accurate weak-lensing analysis requires not only accurate measurement of galaxy shapes but also precise and unbiased measurement of galaxy redshifts. The photometric redshift technique appears as the only possibility to determine the…
Several mission concepts are being studied to directly image planets around nearby stars. It is commonly thought that directly imaging a potentially habitable exoplanet around a Sun-like star requires space telescopes with apertures of at…
As part of NASA's mission to explore habitable planets orbiting nearby stars, this paper explores the detection and characterization capabilities of a 4-m space telescope plus 50-m starshade located at the Earth-Sun L2 point, a.k.a. the New…
Astrometry, one of the oldest branches of astronomy, has been revolutionized by missions like Hipparcos and especially Gaia, which mapped billions of stars with extraordinary precision. However, challenges such as detecting Earth-like…
We explore the capabilities of a starshade mission to directly image multi-star systems. In addition to the diffracted and scattered light for the on-axis star, a multi-star system features additional starlight leakage from the off-axis…
The addition of an external starshade to the {\it Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope} will enable the direct imaging of Earth-radius planets orbiting at $\sim$1 AU. Classification of any detected planets as Earth-like requires both…
Modeling the detection of life has never been more opportune. With next generation space telescopes, like the currently developing Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) concept, we will begin to characterize rocky exoplanets potentially…
Direct imaging of extra-solar planets has now become a reality, especially with the deployment and commissioning of the first generation of specialized ground-based instruments such as the GPI, SPHERE, P1640 and SCExAO. These systems will…
The search for biosignatures in potentially habitable exoplanets is one of the major astrophysics' drivers for the coming decades, and the prime science goal of the HWO NASA mission, a large UV-Optical-IR space telescope to be launched in…
The scientific interest in directly image and identifying Earth-like planets within the Habitable Zone (HZ) around nearby stars is driving the design of specialized direct imaging mission such as ACESAT, EXO-C, EXO-S and AFTA-C. The inner…
Exoplanetary science is increasingly prioritizing efforts toward direct imaging of planetary systems, with emphasis on those that may enable the detection and characterization of potentially habitable exoplanets. The recent 2020 Astronomy…
Photometric redshifts are a key tool to extract as much information as possible from planned cosmic shear experiments. In this work we aim to test the performances that can be achieved with observations in the near-infrared from space and…
The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) -- a flagship ultraviolet/optical/infrared space telescope recommended by the National Academies' Pathways to Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics -- will require detector technologies capable of…
Imaging at hard X-ray energies (~10-600 keV) over very large fields of view (~60 deg per telescope) is required to conduct a high sensitivity all-sky and all-time survey for black holes. The proposed Energetic X-ray Imaging Survey Telescope…
The next few years will be critical for technology development for Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) in its mission to search for and characterize extrasolar planets. To achieve its stated goals with contrasts of one part in ten billion,…
WFIRST will conduct a coronagraphic program of characterizing the atmospheres of planets around bright nearby stars. When observed with the WFIRST Wide Field Camera, these stars will saturate the detector and produce very strong diffraction…
The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) will be a large ultraviolet/optical/near-infrared space telescope operating at the Sun-Earth Lagrange point L2. HWO was highly recommended by the National Academies` 2020 decadal survey and will be the…