Scientific Seminars

High contrast imaging and the search for young exo-planets

Raffaele Gratton
INAF-OA Padova

2017-02-16    11:00    Merate -

High contrast imaging has enormously progressed in the last twenty years, thanks to the development of extreme AO, efficient coronagraph, and various differential imaging techniques. The two frontier instruments are GPI at Gemini South and SPHERE at VLT. We are now routinely achieving contrast of better than 10^5 at separations below 0.5 arcsec, This has allowed the discovery and characterization of about a dozen young planets and a couple of dozens of brown dwarfs. These data opens new windows on the very early phases of planet formation, when disks are still present. Both theory and data indicate that while clearly planets form in the late phase of the protostellar disks, the relation between disk and planets is very complex. Also, the spectra we are obtaining for the young planets indicate systematic differences between young and old objects with similar temperature. I will briefly present the technological and scientific aspects of this very new and exciting science.