2024/08/07 by John D. Monnier, Stefan Kraus, Monnier, John D. +3
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP) #FOS: Physical sciences #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM) #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2408.03896
openalex publication_date 2024/08/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The Planet Formation Imager (PFI) Project is dedicated to defining a next-generation facility that can answer fundamental questions about how planets form, including detection of young giant exoplanets and their circumplanetary disks. The proposed expansive design for a 12-element array of 8m class telescopes with >1.2 km baselines would indeed revolutionize our understanding of planet formation and is technically achievable, albeit at a high cost. It has been 10 years since this conceptual design process began and we give an overview of the status of the PFI project. We also review how a scaled back PFI with fewer large telescopes could answer a range of compelling science questions, including in planet formation and as well as totally different astrophysics areas. New opportunities make a space-based PFI more feasible now and we give a brief overview of new efforts that could also pave the way for the Large Interferometer For Exoplanets (LIFE) space mission.