Spectroscopic direct detection of reflected light from extra-solar planets

At optical wavelengths, an exoplanet’s signature is essentially reflected light from the host star- several orders of magnitude fainter. Since it is superimposed on the star spectrum its detection has been a difficult observational challenge. However, the devel-opment of a new generation of instruments like ESPRESSO and next generation tele-scopes like the E-ELT put us in a privileged position to detect these planets ’ reflected light as we will have access to extremely high signal-to-noise ratio spectra. With this work, we propose an alternative approach for the direct detection of the reflected light of an exoplanet. We simulated observations wit