Related papers: IRSI-DARWIN: How to see through the interplanetary…
During the last few years, considerable effort has been directed towards large-scale (>> $1 Billion US) missions to detect and characterize earth-like planets around nearby stars, such as the Terrestrial Planet Finder Interferometer (TPF-I)…
High-precision interferometric observations of six early-type main sequence stars known to harbour cold debris discs have been obtained in the near-infrared K band with the FLUOR instrument at the CHARA Array. The measured squared…
The cosmic far-infrared background (CIB) encodes dust emission from all galaxies and carries valuable information on structure formation, star formation, and chemical enrichment across cosmic time. However, its redshift-dependent spectrum…
In this paper, we review the various ways in which an infrared stellar interferometer can be used to perform direct detection of extrasolar planetary systems. We first review the techniques based on classical stellar interferometry, where…
Proxima b is our nearest potentially rocky exoplanet and represents a formidable opportunity for exoplanet science and possibly astrobiology. With an angular separation of only 35~mas (or 0.05~AU) from its host star, Proxima b is however…
Interstellar dust grains are often aligned. If the grain alignment direction varies along the line of sight, the thermal emission becomes circularly-polarized. In the diffuse interstellar medium, the circular polarization at far-infrared…
Extensive photometric stellar surveys show that many main sequence stars show emission at infrared and longer wavelengths that is in excess of the stellar photosphere; this emission is thought to arise from circumstellar dust. The presence…
Ultraviolet emission from the first generation of stars in the Universe ionized the intergalactic medium in a process which was completed by z~6; the wavelength of these photons has been redshifted by (1+z) into the near infrared today and…
Future direct observations of extrasolar Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone could be hampered by a worrisome source of noise, starlight-reflecting exozodiacal dust. Mid-infrared surveys are currently underway to constrain the amount…
We describe a search for infra-red excess emission from dusty circumstellar material around 180,000 stars observed by the Kepler and WISE missions. This study is motivated by i) the potential to find bright warm disks around planet host…
We propose a method to distinguish between cloudy, hazy and clearsky (free of clouds and hazes) exoplanet atmospheres that could be applicable to upcoming large aperture space and ground-based telescopes such as the James Webb Space…
The requirements on space missions designed to study Terrestrial exoplanets are discussed. We then investigate whether the design of such a mission, specifically the Darwin nulling interferometer, can be carried out in a simplified…
The Disk Detective citizen science project aims to find new stars with excess 22-$\mu$m emission from circumstellar dust in the AllWISE data release from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). We evaluated 261 Disk Detective…
We present a quantitative model for the infrared emission from dust in the diffuse interstellar medium. The model consists of a mixture of amorphous silicate grains and carbonaceous grains, each with a wide size distribution ranging from…
Interstellar polarization at far-infrared through millimeter wavelengths (0.1 - 1 mm) is primarily due to thermal emission from dust grains aligned with magnetic fields. This mechanism has led to studies of magnetic fields in a variety of…
We are living in a dusty universe: dust is ubiquitously seen in a wide variety of astrophysical environments, ranging from circumstellar envelopes around cool red giants to supernova ejecta, from diffuse and dense interstellar clouds and…
Polarimetric studies of light transmitted through interstellar clouds may give constraints on the properties of the interstellar dust grains. Traditionally, broadband linear polarisation (BBLP) measurements have been considered an important…
[NIRSS is one of three concepts that contributed to the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) mission advocated by the Decadal Survey.] Operating beyond the reaches of the Earth's atmosphere, free of its limiting absorption and…
We present a model for the diffuse interstellar dust that explains the observed wavelength-dependence of extinction, emission, linear and circular polarisation of light. The model is set-up with a small number of parameters. It consists of…
The far-infrared (far-IR) spectral window plays host to a wide range of spectroscopic diagnostics with which to study planetary disk systems and exoplanets at wavelengths completely blocked by the Earth atmosphere. These include the thermal…