Challenge of direct imaging of exoplanets within structures: disentangling real signal from point source from background light

• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2407.13756
• Publication Date: 2024-07-18
• Authors: Jialin Li; Laird M. Close; Jared R. Males; Sebastiaan Y. Haf...; Alycia J. Weinberger; Katherine B. Foll...; Kevin Wagner; Dániel Apai; Ya-Lin Wu; Joseph D. Long; Laura M. Pérez; Logan Pearce; Jay K. Kueny; Eden McEwen; Kyle Van Gorkom; Olivier Guyon; Maggie Kautz; Alexander D. Hedglen; Warren B. Foster; Roz Roberts; Jennifer Lumbres; Lauren Schatz
• Keywords: Direct imaging; SIGNAL (programming language); Point source

The high contrast and spatial resolution requirements for directly imaging exoplanets requires effective coordination of wavefront control, coronagraphy, observation techniques, post-processing algorithms. However, even with this suite tools, identifying retrieving exoplanet signals embedded in resolved scattered light regions can be extremely challenging due to the increased noise from off circumstellar disk potential misinterpretation true nature detected signal. This issue pertains not only terrestrial planets habitable zones within zodiacal exozodiacal emission but also young circumstellar, transitional, debris disks. is particularly H{\alpha} detection transitional work delves into recent observations three disks systems MagAO-X, an extreme adaptive optics system 6.5-meter Magellan Clay telescope. We employed angular differential (ADI) simultaneous spectral (SSDI) combination KLIP, a PCA algorithm post-processing, optimal starlight suppression quasi-static removal. discuss challenges protoplanet identification MagAO-X environments rich reflected structures explore solution removing contributions real astronomical objects current techniques.