Direct Imaging Detection of Planets and Brown Dwarfs
Abstract
With the development of high contrast imaging techniques and infrared detectors, vast efforts have been devoted during the past decade to detect and characterize lighter, cooler and closer companions to nearby stars, and ultimately image new planetary systems. Complementary to other observing techniques (radial velocity, transit, micro-lensing, pulsar-timing), this approach has opened a new astrophysical window to study the physical properties and the formation mechanisms of brown dwarfs and planets. In this talk, I will briefly present the observing challenge and needs associated to the direct imaging of faint companions to bright stars. I will review the different observing techniques and strategies used from space and ground-telescopes and the main samples of nearby stars selected to conduct these deep imaging surveys. I will summarize the main results obtained so far about the detection of substellar companions down to the planetary mass regime, the characterization of their physical properties and of their cool atmospheres as well as the current detection performances obtained in terms of mass and physical separation. Finally, with the next generation instruments, hundreds of exo-planets are expected to be imaged around 2010. In complement to other techniques, the increased number of direct imaging detection will enable comprehensive studies of the exo-planets statistical properties to strongly improve our understanding of their formation and evolution, their relation to disks and brown dwarfs companions and, ultimately, their chemical composition and internal structure.
- Publication:
-
In the Spirit of Bernard Lyot: The Direct Detection of Planets and Circumstellar Disks in the 21st Century
- Pub Date:
- June 2007
- Bibcode:
- 2007lyot.confE..29C