Speaker
Description
The lecture will present the current understanding of habitable exoplanets and discuss how high-contrast direct imaging using the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) can enhance this knowledge. To achieve this, a specialized instrument must meet certain requirements. I will introduce a potential design for such an instrument, referred to as the Planetary Camera and Spectrograph (PCS). A key feature of PCS is an optimized eXtreme Adaptive Optics (XAO) system, integrated with coronagraphy and speckle suppression techniques, aimed at delivering high contrast on the order of 1e-8 at angular separations of a few tens of milliarcseconds. I will detail these subsystems, explain the necessary specifications, and outline our research and development efforts to demonstrate how these requirements can be achieved.
