Context. Kepler observations have revealed a class of short-period exoplanets, of which Kepler-1520 b is the prototype, which have comet-like dust tails thought to be the result of small, rocky planets losing mass. The shape and chromaticity of the …
Aims: To understand planet formation it is necessary to study the birth environment of planetary systems. Resolved imaging of young planet forming disks allows us to study this environment in great detail and find signs of planet-disk interaction and …
With the Spectro-Polarimetric High- contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument at ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) we can study the linear polarisation of directly detected planets and brown dwarfs, to learn about their atmospheres and immediate …
We report on the performance of a vector apodizing phase plate coronagraph that operates over a wavelength range of 2-5 μm and is installed in MagAO/Clio2 at the 6.5 m Magellan Clay telescope at Las Campanas Observatory, Chile. The coronagraph …
Context. Evaporating rocky exoplanets, such as KIC 12557548b, eject large amounts of dust, which can trail the planet in a comet- like tail. When such objects occult their host star, the resulting transit signal contains information about the dust in …
Context. The atmospheric and surface characterization of rocky planets is a key goal of exoplanet science. Unfortunately, the measurements required for this are generally out of reach of present-day instrumentation. However, the planet Mercury in our …
We provide a proof of the technical feasibility of LOUPE, the first integral-field snapshot spectropolarimeter, designed to monitor the reflected flux and polarization spectrum of Earth. These are to be used as benchmark data for the retrieval of …
Context. Ground-based high-dispersion (R ~ 100 000) spectroscopy (HDS) is proving to be a powerful technique with which to characterize extrasolar planets. The planet signal is distilled from the bright starlight, combining ral and time-differential …