RETRACTED: Direct imaging discovery of a Jovian exoplanet within a triple-star system.

Direct imaging allows for the detection and characterization of exoplanets via their thermal emission. We report the discovery via imaging of a young Jovian planet in a triple-star system and characterize its atmospheric properties through near-infrared spectroscopy. The semimajor axis of the planet is closer relative to that of its hierarchical triple-star system than for any known exoplanet within a stellar binary or triple, making HD 131399 dynamically unlike any other known system.

Fast-moving features in the debris disk around AU Microscopii.

In the 1980s, excess infrared emission was discovered around main-sequence stars; subsequent direct-imaging observations revealed orbiting disks of cold dust to be the source. These 'debris disks' were thought to be by-products of planet formation because they often exhibited morphological and brightness asymmetries that may result from gravitational perturbation by planets. This was proved to be true for the β Pictoris system, in which the known planet generates an observable warp in the disk.

Active Optics: stress polishing of toric mirrors for the VLT SPHERE adaptive optics system.

The manufacturing of toric mirrors for the Very Large Telescope-Spectro-Polarimetric High-Contrast Exoplanet Research instrument (SPHERE) is based on Active Optics and stress polishing. This figuring technique allows minimizing mid and high spatial frequency errors on an aspherical surface by using spherical polishing with full size tools. In order to reach the tight precision required, the manufacturing error budget is described to optimize each parameter.

Pupil stabilization for SPHERE's extreme AO and high performance coronagraph system.

We propose a new concept of pupil motion sensor for astronomical adaptive optics systems and present experimental results obtained during the first laboratory validation of this concept. Pupil motion is an important issue in the case of extreme adaptive optics, high contrast systems, such as the proposed Planet Finder instruments for the ESO and Gemini 8-meter telescopes. Such high contrast imaging instruments will definitively require pupil stabilization to minimize the effect of quasi-static aberrations.

High-order adaptive optics requirements for direct detection of extrasolar planets: Application to the SPHERE instrument.

The detection of extrasolar planets implies an extremely high-contrast, long-exposure imaging capability at near infrared and probably visible wavelengths. We present here the core of any Planet Finder instrument, that is, the extreme adaptive optics (XAO) subsystem. The level of AO correction directly impacts the exposure time required for planet detection.

Optimization of star-oriented and layer-oriented wavefront sensing concepts for ground layer adaptive optics.

Multiconjugate adaptive optics is one of the major challenges in adaptive optics. It requires the measurement of the volumic distribution of the turbulence. Two wavefront sensing (WFS) concepts have been proposed to perform the wavefront analysis for such systems: the star-oriented and layer-oriented approaches.

Closed-loop experimental validation of the spatially filtered Shack-Hartmann concept.

An experimental validation of the spatially filtered Shack-Hartmann concept (F-SH) is presented that allows aliasing effects to be decreased. This effect is studied by use of an adaptive optical testbed with a focal plane pinhole in front of the wave-front sensor. First, the ability to close the loop on turbulence is demonstrated.

The Spectroscopic Orbit of the Planetary Companion Transiting HD 209458.

We report a spectroscopic orbit with period P=3.52433+/-0.00027 days for the planetary companion that transits the solar-type star HD 209458.