Objective The direct detection of young and warm extrasolar giant planets in the habitable zone of nearby cool stars is one of the major goals of future ground-based high-contrast imaging (HCI) instruments. The motive is to study the physical and chemical properties of exoplanetary atmospheres and search for evidences of biosignatures. Direct imaging is the required technique to characterize exoplanets with spectroscopy of their atmospheres. However, the ability to resolve planet signal above bright stellar halo is still a challenge. A coronagraph is an optic, which suppresses the diffraction effects of the telescope by blocking the starlight but wavefront errors arising due to Earth’s atmospheric turbulence scatter starlight over the science region of interest and bury faint planet photons in stellar/speckle noise. Most of these errors are mitigated by the dedicated Extreme Adaptive Optics instruments. However, under the AO/ExAO WF residuals, imaging and characterizing exoplanets at small angles require achieving detection limit 10 to 100 times better than the state of the art. No existing ground-based HCI instruments have successfully disentangled the planet signals from stellar residuals at small angles. The proposal seek to develop and demonstrate wavefront sensing and control techniques that will enhance the planet detection sensitivity at small angles and will aid the existing HCI instruments in directly imaging young Jovian-like exoplanets at small angles around nearby stars. This research proposal will also enable next generation of exoplanets characterization instruments with the European Extremely Large Telescope to perform low resolution spectroscopy of Neptune or Super-Earth exoplanets in the HZ of low mass stars (for example M-type). Fields of science natural sciencesphysical sciencesastronomyplanetary sciencesplanetsexoplanetologynatural sciencesphysical sciencesastronomyobservational astronomyinfrared astronomynatural sciencesphysical sciencesastronomyplanetary sciencesplanetsgiant planetssuper-Earthsnatural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesatmospheric sciencesmeteorologyatmospheric circulationatmospheric turbulencenatural sciencesphysical sciencesopticsspectroscopy Programme(s) H2020-EU.1.3. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Main Programme H2020-EU.1.3.2. - Nurturing excellence by means of cross-border and cross-sector mobility Topic(s) MSCA-IF-2017 - Individual Fellowships Call for proposal H2020-MSCA-IF-2017 See other projects for this call Funding Scheme MSCA-IF-EF-ST - Standard EF Coordinator OBSERVATOIRE DE PARIS Net EU contribution € 173 076,00 Address AVENUE DE L OBSERVATOIRE 61 75014 Paris France See on map Region Ile-de-France Ile-de-France Paris Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Total cost € 173 076,00
