Imaging Other Worlds with the Largest Telescopes: Today and Tomorrow

by Dr Michael Liu (Institute of Astronomy, University of Hawaii at Manoa)

Thursday Oct 24, 2019, 3:30 PM → 5:00 PM Pacific/Honolulu

Rm 112 (WAT Hall)

Over the past decade, direct imaging has become a key method to study
planets around other stars, a.k.a. exoplanets. Thanks to both
astronomical and instrumental advances, the largest ground-based
telescopes can now obtain images and spectra of gas-giant (Jupiter-like)
planets in their youth. I will share what these studies have uniquely
shown us about exoplanetary properties, demographics, and origins, as
well as how these results differ from our prior expectations. Then I
will discuss the tranformational advances that are possible with the
Thirty-Meter Telescope (TMT). TMT will greatly deepen characterization
of the gas-giant planets that are being imaged now and extend direct
imaging studies to much smaller planets including, perhaps most notably,
rocky planets in the habitable zones of the nearest stars. Altogether
such work provides us unique context for understanding our own planetary
system and its place in the cosmos.