Physical Society Colloquium

The debut of exoplanet imaging

David Lafrenière

Université de Montréal

Over the past two decades, the study of exoplanets has rapidly grown into a full-fledged discipline of astronomy. Close to 1000 confirmed exoplanets have been found to date, although, with a few exceptions, none of them has been seen directly. Instead, their presence was deduced from perturbations that they induce on their host star's light. While highly successful for planets close to their star, these indirect detection methods are blind to planets on orbits of several astronomical units or larger. Direct imaging, a technique best suited to find planets on larger orbits, is thus absolutely essential to complete the exoplanet population census and better understand the physics involved in their formation, their evolution and their atmosphere. Following years of sustained efforts to achieve the needed sensitivities, direct imaging has finally made its debut: about a half-dozen new planetary systems have been seen directly over the past few years. And thanks to new instrumentation, direct imaging is now poised to play a leading role in the search and characterization of exoplanets for the next decade. In this talk I will present the main motivations for direct exoplanet imaging, explain some observing techniques, highlight some recent results, and discuss new projects that will bring direct imaging to new heights.