Related papers: Comparative Lyot Coronagraphy with Extreme AO Syst…
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…
Coronagraphs of the apodized pupil and shaped pupil varieties use the Fraunhofer diffraction properties of amplitude masks to create regions of high contrast in the vicinity of a target star. Here we present a hybrid coronagraph…
Non-common path quasi-static and differential aberrations are one of the big hurdles of direct imaging for current and future high-contrast imaging instruments. They increase speckle and photon noise thus reducing the achievable contrast…
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…
We present the final results of the Apodized Pupil Lyot Coronagraph (APLC) on the High-contrast imager for Complex Aperture Telescopes (HiCAT) testbed, under NASA's Strategic Astrophysics Technology program. The HiCAT testbed was developed…
This paper gives a simple and original presentation of various coronagraphs inherited from the Lyot coronagraph. We first present the Lyot and Roddier phase mask coronagraphs and study their properties as a function of the focal mask size.…
We introduce a new class of solutions for Apodized Pupil Lyot Coronagraphs (APLC) with segmented aperture telescopes to remove broadband diffracted light from a star with a contrast level of $10^{10}$. These new coronagraphs provide a key…
The ability to characterize exoplanets by spectroscopy of their atmospheres requires direct imaging techniques to isolate planet signal from the bright stellar glare. One of the limitations with the direct detection of exoplanets, either…
Observations of binary stars for faint companions with conventional coronagraphic methods are challenging, as both targets will be bright enough to obscure any nearby faint companions if their scattered light is not suppressed. We propose…
The apodized-pupil Lyot coronagraph is one of the most advanced starlight cancellation concepts studied intensively in the past few years. Extreme adaptive optics instruments built for present-day 8m class telescopes will operate with such…
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…
In this paper, we present the design and the expected performance of the classical Lyot coronagraph for the high contrast imaging modes of the wide-field imager MICADO. MICADO is a near-IR camera for the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT,…
Modern coronagraph design relies on advanced, large-scale optimization processes that require an ever increasing amount of computational resources. In this paper, we restrict ourselves to the design of Apodized Pupil Lyot Coronagraphs…
The Apodized Pupil Lyot Coronagraph (APLC) is a diffraction suppression system installed in the recently deployed instruments Palomar/P1640, Gemini/GPI, and VLT/SPHERE to allow direct imaging and spectroscopy of circumstellar environments.…
The direct detection of extrasolar planets by imaging means is limited by the large flux of light from the host star being scattered into the region of interest by a variety of processes, including diffraction. Coronagraphs are devices that…
The exoplanetary science through direct imaging and spectroscopy will largely expand with the forthcoming development of new instruments at the VLT (SPHERE), Gemini (GPI), Subaru (HiCIAO), and Palomar (Project 1640) observatories. All these…
Direct imaging of exoplanets requires very high contrast levels, which are obtained using coronagraphs. But residual quasi-static aberrations create speckles in the focal plane downstream of the coronagraph which mask the planet. This…
We present early laboratory simulations and extensive on-sky tests validating of the performance of a shaped pupil coronagraph (SPC) behind an extreme-AO corrected beam of the Subaru Coronagraphic Extreme Adaptive Optics (SCExAO) system. In…
We describe the design and initial results from a visible-light Lyot coronagraph for SCExAO/VAMPIRES. The coronagraph is comprised of four hard-edged, partially transmissive focal plane masks with inner working angles of 36 mas, 55 mas, 92…
We present a publicly available software package developed for exploring apodized pupil Lyot coronagraph (APLC) solutions for various telescope architectures. In particular, the package optimizes the apodizer component of the APLC for a…