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Imaging and spectrally analyzing extrasolar planets is a very exciting approach to derive the chemical composition of their atmosphere, perform comparative exoplanetelogy, and understand the formation and evolution of the planets. However, this observing method is also very challenging as it requires observations of planetary companions that are 10^6 to 10^10 fainter than their host stars at separations shorter than 1 arcsec. In this presentation, I will briefly review the recipes to achieve exoplanet images and lift the veil on the nature of these planets. One of the main limitations is the residual speckles, the seeds of light that are left in these images of exoplanets and prevent us from observing the faintest planets. I will tell you the stories about ZELDA, our wavefront sensing approach to calibrate these errors and show some promising results on the exoplanet imager SPHERE on the VLT to push limits further for exoplanet observations. The second part of my talk will be dedicated to Astronomy and Astrophysics across Africa (5A), a project that I am co-leading with my colleague Eric Lagadec in Nice to expand and strengthen Africa-Europe collaborations towards the Sustainable Development Goals. |
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