Related papers: IRSI-DARWIN: How to see through the interplanetary…
The Diffuse InfraRed Background Experiment on COBE measured the total infrared signal seen from space at a distance of 1 astronomical unit from the Sun. Using time variations as the Earth orbits the Sun, it is possible to remove most of the…
The COBE Diffuse Infrared Background Experiment (DIRBE) was designed to search for the cosmic infrared background (CIB) radiation. Scattered light and thermal emission from the interplanetary dust (IPD) are major contributors to the diffuse…
The DARWIN mission is an Infrared free flying interferometer mission based on the new technique of nulling interferometry. Its main objective is to detect and characterize other Earth-like planets, analyze the composition of their…
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…
The DIRBE on the COBE spacecraft was designed primarily to conduct systematic search for an isotropic CIB in ten photometric bands from 1.25 to 240 microns. The results of that search are presented here. Conservative limits on the CIB are…
The Cosmic Infrared Background (CIB) is hidden behind veils of foreground emission from our own solar system and Galaxy. This paper describes procedures for removing the Galactic IR emission from the 1.25 - 240 micron COBE DIRBE maps as…
The zodiacal foreground for a highly sensitive space infrared interferometer is predicted for various observing locations. For the predictions we use a model that was derived from measurements of the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE). We…
Exozodiacal dust is warm or hot dust found in the inner regions of planetary systems orbiting main sequence stars, in or around their habitable zones. The dust can be the most luminous component of extrasolar planetary systems, but…
We model the infrared emission from zodiacal dust detected by the IRAS and COBE missions, with the aim of estimating the relative contributions of asteroidal, cometary and interstellar dust to the zodiacal cloud. Our most important result…
Foreground emission and scattered light from interplanetary dust (IPD) particles and emission from Galactic stellar sources are the greatest obstacles for determining the cosmic infrared background (CIB) from diffuse sky measurements in the…
Earth-sized planets around nearby stars are being detected for the first time by ground-based radial velocity and space-based transit surveys. This milestone is opening the path towards the definition of missions able to directly detect the…
The quest for other habitable worlds and the search for life among them are major goals of modern astronomy. One way to make progress towards these goals is to obtain high-quality spectra of a large number of exoplanets over a broad range…
We present the results of a search of infrared excess candidates in a comprehensive (29\,000 stars) magnitude limited sample of dwarf stars, spanning the spectral range F2-K0, and brighter than V$=$15 mag. We searched the sample within the…
The Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) Coronagraph Instrument (CGI) will be the first high-performance stellar coronagraph using active wavefront control for deep starlight suppression in space, providing unprecedented levels of…
The Cosmic InfraRed Background (CIRB) is the sum total of the redshifted and reprocessed short wavelength radiation from the era of galaxy formation, and hence contains vital information about the history of galactic evolution. One of the…
The cosmic infrared background (CIB) consists of emission from distant, dusty, star-forming galaxies. Energetically, the CIB is very important as it contains as much energy as the extragalactic optical background. The nature and…
Habitable zone dust levels are a key unknown that must be understood to ensure the success of future space missions to image Earth analogues around nearby stars. Current detection limits are several orders of magnitude above the level of…
Submillimeter and near-infrared images of cool dusty debris disks and rings suggest the existence of unseen planets. At dusty but non-imaged stars, semi-major axes of associated planets can be estimated from the dust temperature. For some…
Laboratory characterization of Interplanetary Dust Particles (IDPs) collected in the lower stratosphere represents a concrete analysis of cosmic dust properties which played a fundamental role in the origin and evolution of Solar System.…
Nulling interferometry, a powerful technique for high-resolution imaging of the close neighbourhood of bright astrophysical objets, is currently considered for future space missions such as Darwin or the Terrestrial Planet Finder…