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Paper: Optimizing Coronagraphic Surveys for Planets
Volume: 398, Extreme Solar Systems
Page: 467
Authors: Agol, E.
Abstract: Recent laboratory experiments have demonstrated extremely high contrast imaging near a bright point source (Trauger & Traub 2007), a prerequisite for coronagraphic surveys for extrasolar planets with TPF and precursor telescopes. As the technology is now maturing, the question of which stars to target and how to optimize a direct imaging planet search needs to be addressed, so I discuss scaling relations and analytic estimates for how to optimize the number of planets detected (not necessarily in the habitable zone), taking into account noise from zodiacal light, exo-zodiacal light, and speckle noise, as well as the diversity among stellar and planetary systems.
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