This book describes current and future methods of detecting planets beyond our solar system, how they will be characterized and how life on them can be investigated. In so doing, this monograph treats the technologies used, and what needs to be developed to overcome the specific problems of high–resolution and high–contrast astronomical imaging. All the methods included here are described in both technological and physical terms, highlighting primary sources of errors and ways to avoid them. A concluding chapter lists the anticipated results of current and future projects and tries to envision new questions that might arise an extraterrestrial life form has been found ...
Table of Contents
1. Extrasolar planets2. Life beyond the solar system
3. The search for planets
4. Definition of the direct imaging problem
5. Solutions to the direct imaging problem
6. And then?
Authors
Markus Feldt is a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy. Having obtained degrees from the Technical University of Berlin and from the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, he started working at MPIA in 1999. He worked in the fields of nuclear physics, star formation, exo–planet search, and adaptive optical systems. During his career he served as P.I. forPYRAMIR (an infrared pyramid wave front sensor), CHEOPS (a phase–A study for an exoplanet imager), and as Co–P.I. for SPHERE, the ESO exoplanet imager for the VLT. He is author of about 100 scientific and numerous popular scientific articles.
Markus Kasper is a scientist at the European Southern Observatory. Having obtained degrees from the Johann Wolfgang Goethe–University of Frankfurt and the Ruprecht Karls–University of Heidelberg, he started working at ESO in 2000. He worked in the fields of star formation,
high–contrast imaging, and adaptive optics systems and was involved in or led several major instrumentation projects at ESO for the VLT such as MACAO (a multi–application curvature AO platform), NACO LGS (the laser guide star implementation for the AO system NACO) and
SPHERE. He published about 80 scientific and numerous popular scientific articles.
