Figure 6 A: Direct image of a star with a 36-element Exo-Earth Discoverer. The entrance pupil is highly diluted, and the exit pupil is fully densified, with adjacent hexagonal elements. Top left: real part of the image amplitude in the combined focal plane, where negative areas appear dark and positive areas appear bright; top right: exit pupil, bottom right: image intensity; bottom left: intensity profile.

Figure 6 B: Same as figure 6A with a Roddier phase-mask coronagraph now in operation. The central dark disk now seen in the amplitude image (top left) just downstream from the phase mask indicates its effect. The pupil intensity (top right) is now shown just up-stream from the pupil diaphragm, the pattern of which matches the geometric pupil image formed after the focal plane. The darkened hexagons and brighter halo now apparent illustrates the effectiveness of the phase mask. The cleaned image (bottom right) has an attenuated central peak and sidelobes. The image of a planet, 12 magnitudes fainter than the star, becomes visible (arrow). A white circle indicates the size of the high resolution field. Spurious deviations from the expected ternary symetry in the star's diffraction pattern result from small position errors in the pupil pattern. Dark hole and dark speckle techniques applied to the residual star light are expected to gain the extra 3 to 5 magnitudes needed to detect a typical Earth-like planet, expected to be a million times (15 magnitudes) fainter than its star in the 10 micron infra-red. (from Riaud, Moutou, Boccaletti &Labeyrie, in preparation).