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One of the biggest challenges associated with a nulling interferometer-based approach to detecting extra-solar Earth-like planets comes from the extremely stringent requirements of pathlength, polarization and amplitude matching in the…
Observing habitable exoplanets that may resemble Earth is a key priority in astronomy that is dependent on not only detecting such worlds, but also ascertaining that apparent signatures of habitability are not due to other sources. Space…
The characterization of extrasolar earth-like atmospheres for biosignatures remains one of the most compelling and elusive challenges in astronomy. Coronagraphy, nulling interferometry and free-flying occulters have been advanced as…
A mid-infrared nulling-space interferometer is a promising way to characterize thermal light from habitable planet candidates around Sun-like stars. However, one of the main challenges for achieving this ambitious goal is a high-precision…
The physical characterization of exoplanets will require to take spectra at several orbital positions. For that purpose, a direct imaging capability is necessary. Direct imaging requires an efficient stellar suppression mechanism,…
In March 2009, NASA will launch the Kepler satellite -- a mission designed to discover habitable Earth-like planets around distant Sun-like stars. The method that Kepler will use to detect distant worlds will only reveal the size of the…
The Planet Formation Imager (PFI) is a future world facility that will image the process of planetary formation. It will have an angular resolution and sensitivity sufficient to resolve sub-Hill sphere structures around newly formed giant…
Space-based direct imaging provides prospects for detection and spectral characterization of exoplanets at optical and near-infrared wavelengths. Integral field spectrographs (IFS) have been historically baselined for these mission…
I compare an aggressive ground-based gravitational microlensing survey for terrestrial planets to a space-based survey. The Ground-based survey assumes a global network of very wide field-of-view ~2m telescopes that monitor fields in the…
Direct detection and characterization of Earth-like planets around Sun-like stars is a core task for evaluating the prevalence of habitability and life in the Universe. Here, we discuss a promising option for achieving this goal, which is…
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will enable the search for and characterization of terrestrial exoplanet atmospheres in the habitable zone via transmission spectroscopy. However, relatively little work has been done to use solar…
The currently feasible method of detection of Earth-mass planets is transit photometry, with detection probability decreasing with a planet's distance from the star. The existence or otherwise of short-period terrestrial planets will tell…
The only way to detect planets around stars at distances of several kpc is by (photometric or astrometric) microlensing observations. In this paper, we show that the capability of photometric microlensing extends to the detection of signals…
Searching for planets analogous to Earth in terms of mass and equilibrium temperature is currently the first step in the quest for habitable conditions outside our Solar System and, ultimately, the search for life in the universe. Future…
One of the most exciting scientific challenges is to detect Earth-like planets in the habitable zones of other stars in the galaxy and search for evidence of life. The ability to observe and characterise dozens of potentially Earth-like…
Exoplanet observations promise one day to unveil the presence of extraterrestrial life. Atmospheric compounds in strong chemical disequilibrium would point to large-scale biological activity just as oxygen and methane do in the Earth's…
NASA's Kepler mission will fly a photometer based on a wide-field Schmidt camera with a 0.95 m aperture, staring at a single field continuously for at least 4 years. Although the mission's principal aim is to locate transiting extrasolar…
The direct imaging of Earth-like planets in solar neighbors is challenging. Both transit and radial velocity (RV) methods suffer from noise due to stellar activity. By choosing a typical configuration of an X array interferometer, we used…
A space telescope capable of high-contrast imaging has been recognized as the avenue toward finding terrestrial planets around nearby Sun-like stars and characterizing their potential habitability. It is thus essential to quantify the…
The proposed infrared space interferometry mission Darwin has two main aims: (i) to detect and characterize exo-planets similar to the Earth, and (ii) to carry out astrophysical imaging in the wavelength range 6 - 20 micron at a sensitivity…