Imaging exoplanets below the telescope stability limit
5 affiliations
- 1Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL USA
- 2Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA), Northwestern University, Evanston, IL USA
- 3Departments of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, Electrical Engineering, and Astronomy, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA USA
- 4Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA USA
- 5Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD USA
Abstract
Exoplanet imaging is the main method for detailed characterization of planets orbiting beyond 1 au (ref. 1) but it requires suppressing the bright glare of the star to see the faint planet light. As well as sophisticated instrumentation2,3, effective image processing is necessary for starlight suppression, which continues to be a substantial limitation4. Standard algorithms use reference images for starlight modelling and thus they are limited by inevitable telescope instabilities that change from reference to science observation5,6. Addressing this challenge will increase the number of planets amenable to direct imaging and will be a notable step towards imaging exo-Earths with future observatories7. Here we present a new physics-based method for starlight subtraction. Our method combines a multistep optimization with a flexible physical model to produce a starlight model, allowing modelling and compensation of instrument instabilities. We use automatic differentiation (autodiff)8 to optimize millions of model parameters. We demonstrate our method on observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam)9–11 coronagraph instrument. We achieve sensitivity 2–15 times superior to standard techniques, including the first detection of 51 Eridani b (ref. 12) at 4.3 μm. This is the first time, to our knowledge, that such an approach has demonstrated substantially improved sensitivity on real, on-sky coronagraphic imaging. Our framework can be extended to other current and future ground-based and space-based observatories, including the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), potentially relaxing the unprecedented stability requirements needed to make these a success.
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BibTeX
@article{ferrerchavez2026imaging,
title = {{Imaging exoplanets below the telescope stability limit}},
author = {Rodrigo Ferrer-Chavez and Jason J. Wang and Katherine L. Bouman and William T. Freeman and Laurent Pueyo and Brandon Y. Feng and Marshall D. Perrin},
journal = {Nature},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.1038/s41586-026-11213-z},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-11213-z},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Imaging exoplanets below the telescope stability limit
AU - Rodrigo Ferrer-Chavez
AU - Jason J. Wang
AU - Katherine L. Bouman
AU - William T. Freeman
AU - Laurent Pueyo
AU - Brandon Y. Feng
AU - Marshall D. Perrin
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/04
JO - Nature
DO - 10.1038/s41586-026-11213-z
UR - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-11213-z
AB - Exoplanet imaging is the main method for detailed characterization of planets orbiting beyond 1 au (ref. 1) but it requires suppressing the bright glare of the star to see the faint planet light. As well as sophisticated instrumentation2,3, effective image processing is necessary for starlight suppression, which continues to be a substantial limitation4. Standard algorithms use reference images for starlight modelling and thus they are limited by inevitable telescope instabilities that change from reference to science observation5,6. Addressing this challenge will increase the number of planets amenable to direct imaging and will be a notable step towards imaging exo-Earths with future observatories7. Here we present a new physics-based method for starlight subtraction. Our method combines a multistep optimization with a flexible physical model to produce a starlight model, allowing modelling and compensation of instrument instabilities. We use automatic differentiation (autodiff)8 to optimize millions of model parameters. We demonstrate our method on observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam)9–11 coronagraph instrument. We achieve sensitivity 2–15 times superior to standard techniques, including the first detection of 51 Eridani b (ref. 12) at 4.3 μm. This is the first time, to our knowledge, that such an approach has demonstrated substantially improved sensitivity on real, on-sky coronagraphic imaging. Our framework can be extended to other current and future ground-based and space-based observatories, including the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), potentially relaxing the unprecedented stability requirements needed to make these a success.
SN - 0028-0836
SN - 1476-4687
ER -