Extreme Adaptive Optics

2018/09/14 by Olivier Guyon · 110 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Adaptive optics #Adaptive optics and wavefront sensing #Astronomy #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics #Circumstellar habitable zone #Coronagraph #Direct imaging #Exoplanet #Optics #Physics #Planet #Starlight #Stars #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #Telescope #Wavefront

paper · doi:10.1146/annurev-astro-081817-052000

published in Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics 56(1), 315-355 (Annual Reviews)

openalex publication_date 2018/09/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

Over the last two decades, several thousand exoplanets have been identified, and their study has become a high scientific priority. Direct imaging of nearby exoplanets and the circumstellar disks in which they form and evolve is challenging due to the high contrast ratio and small angular separation relative to the central star. Exoplanets are typically within 1 arcsec of, and between 4 and 10 orders of magnitude fainter than, the stars they orbit. To meet these challenges, ground-based telescopes must be equipped with extreme adaptive optics (ExAO) systems optimized to acquire high-contrast images of the immediate surrounding of nearby bright stars. Current ExAO systems have the sensitivity to image thermal emission from young massive planets in near-IR, while future systems deployed on Giant Segmented Mirror Telescopes will image starlight reflected by lower-mass rocky planets. Thanks to rapid progress in optical coronagraphy, wavefront control, and data analysis techniques, direct imaging and spectroscopic characterization of habitable exoplanets will be within reach of the next generation of large ground-based telescopes.

Citations

• A New Algorithm for Point‐Spread Function Subtraction in High‐Contrast Imaging: A Demonstration with Angular Differential Imaging
• Angular Differential Imaging: A Powerful High‐Contrast Imaging Technique
• The Possibility of Compensating Astronomical Seeing
• Zernike polynomials and atmospheric turbulence*

Cited by

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• On-sky Demonstration of Subdiffraction-limited Astronomical Measurement Using a Photonic Lantern
• Focal-plane wavefront sensing with moderately broadband light using a short multi-mode fiber
• Dynamical Analysis of the HD 169142 Planet-Forming Disk: Twelve Years of High-Contrast Polarimetry
• Enabling Discoveries: Thirty Years of Advanced Technologies and Instrumentation at the National Science Foundation
• The Diversity of Exoplanetary Environments and the Search for Signs of Life Beyond Earth
• Full-volume aberration-space holography
• An Imaging Search for Post-Main-Sequence Planets of Sirius B
• Fully fluorinated non-carbon compounds NF3 and SF6 as ideal technosignature gases
• Millisecond exoplanet imaging: I. method and simulation results
• How many suns are in the sky? A SPHERE multiplicity survey of exoplanet host stars

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