Direct imaging of exoplanets in the habitable zone with adaptive optics

Understand

One of the primary goals of exoplanet science is to find and characterize habitable planets, and direct imaging will play a key role in this effort.

• Though imaging a true Earth analog is likely out of reach from the ground, the coming generation of giant telescopes will find and characterize many planets in and near the habitable zones (HZs) of nearby stars.
• Radial velocity and transit searches indicate that such planets are common, but imaging them will require achieving extreme contrasts at very small angular separations, posing many challenges for adaptive optics (AO) system design.
• Giant planets in the HZ may even be within reach with the latest generation of high-contrast imagers for a handful of very nearby stars.