Related papers: High Contrast Imaging of Extrasolar Planets
Gaussian aperture pupil masks (GAPMs) can in theory achieve the contrast requisite for directly imaging an extrasolar planet. We outline the process of fabricating and testing a GAPM for use on the Penn State near-IR Imager and Spectrograph…
Gaussian aperture pupil masks (GAPMs) can in theory achieve the contrast requisite for directly imaging an extrasolar planet around a nearby solar type star. We outline the process of designing, fabricating, and testing a GAPM for use on…
Imaging terrestrial exoplanets around nearby stars is a formidable technical challenge, requiring the development of coronagraphs to suppress the stellar halo of diffracted light at the location of the planet. In this review, we derive the…
Placing a pupil mask with a gaussian aperture into the optical train of current telescopes represents a way to attain high contrast imaging that potentially improves contrast by orders of magnitude compared to current techniques. We present…
Direct imaging of exoplanets or circumstellar disk material requires extreme contrast at the 10-6 to 10-12 levels at < 100 mas angular separation from the star. Focal-plane mask (FPM) coronagraphic imaging has played a key role in this…
This tutorial is an introduction to High-Contrast Imaging, a technique that enables astronomers to isolate light from faint planets and/or circumstellar disks that would otherwise be lost amidst the light of their host stars. Although…
The high-contrast coronagraph for direct imaging earth-like exoplanet at the visible needs a contrast of 10^(-10) at a small angular separation of 4 lambda/D or less. Here we report our recent laboratory experiment that is close to the…
Motivated by the desire to image exosolar planets, recent work by us and others has shown that high-contrast imaging can be achieved using specially shaped pupil masks. To date, the masks we have designed have been symmetric with respect to…
Direct observation of extra-solar planets (exoplanets) is essential to understand how planetary systems were born, how they evolve, and ultimately, to identify biological signatures on these planets. However, the enormous contrast in flux…
Directly imaging Earth-sized exoplanets with a visible-light coronagraph instrument on a space telescope will require a system that can achieve $\sim10^{-10}$ raw contrast and maintain it for the duration of observations (on the order of…
The vortex coronagraph is an optical instrument that precisely removes on-axis starlight allowing for high contrast imaging at small angular separation from the star, thereby providing a crucial capability for direct detection and…
Several Extreme Adaptive Optics (XAO) systems dedicated to the detection and characterisation of the exoplanets are currently in operation for 8-10 meter class telescopes. Coronagraphs are commonly used in these facilities to reject the…
The realization that direct imaging of extrasolar planets could be technologically feasible within the next decade or so has inspired a great deal of recent research into high-contrast imaging. We ourselves have contributed several design…
We summarize the scientific potential of high contrast optical space imaging for studies of extrasolar planets, debris disks, and planet formation. The unique scientific capabilities offered by a 2-m class optical telescope, the technical…
Aims. We present a solution to improve the performance of coronagraphs for the detection of exo-planets. Methods. We simulate numerically several kinds of coronagraphic systems, with the aim of evaluating the gain obtained with an adaptive…
High contrast imaging can find and characterize gas giant planets around nearby young stars and the closest M stars, complementing radial velocity and astrometric searches by exploring orbital separations inaccessible to indirect methods.…
As adaptive optics technology continues to improve, the stellar coronagraph will play an ever increasing role in ground-based high-contrast imaging observations. Though several different image masks exist for the most common type of…
Exoplanet imaging and spectroscopy are now routinely achieved by dedicated instruments on large ground-based observatories (e.g. Gemini/GPI, VLT/SPHERE, or Subaru/SCExAO). In addition to extreme adaptive optics (ExAO) and post-processing…
We present the first laboratory experiments using a notch-filter mask, a coronagraphic image mask that can produce infinite dynamic range in an ideal Lyot coronagraph according to scalar diffraction theory. We fabricated the first…
Angular differential imaging provides a novel way of probing the high contrast of our universe. Until now, its applications have been primarily localized to searching for exoplanets around nearby stars. This work presents a suite of…