Conbrex Objectives

Exoplanetology has become a major topic in astronomy over the last 30 years. New observing capabilities and modelling have revolutionised the understanding of how planetary systems form and evolve.

Yet, the 5-20 astronomical units (AU) region, where the giant planets formed by accretion of gas on to a solid core are supposed to form predominantly, remains barely explored due to instrumental limitations. GAIA and the E-ELT instruments will be well suited to explore planetary systems at this scale. However, with the use of recent innovative signal processing developments applied to current High Contrast Imaging (HCI) data and/or the use of high-performance, AO-fed medium/high resolution spectrographs, exploring this region is possible right now.

COBREX will apply such new data processing techniques on the largest library of HCI data to make a significant improvement in the detectability of planets and disks in the 5-20 AU region. This will allow witnessing, for the first time, analogues of our Solar System Giants at early ages, and constraining the distribution of GPs in the 5-20 AU. Combining in different ways various types of data will allow exploring the demography of young giant planets at all separations. Finally, COBREX will couple HCI with medium/high resolution spectroscopy, to find and study planet properties into exquisite details, and investigate in an unprecedented way the link between disks and planets.