Abstract　 　　  

     Exoplanets search is one of the hottest topics in both modern astronomy and public domain. Over 1900 exoplanets have been confirmed mostly by the indirect radial velocity and transiting approaches, yielding several important physical information such as masses and radii. The study of the physics of planet formation and evolution will focus on giant planets through the direct imaging. 

  In recent years, the planet imaging instrument has been proposed and developed on 8-meter class telescopes, which is optimized for the high-contrast imaging observation, for the giant exoplanets . Gemini Planet Imager has recently come to its first light, which has pushed the contrast level to 10-6. On the other hand, none professional adaptive optics is available for most of current 3~4 meter class telescopes due to this or that reason, which will limit its potential scientific observations especially in the direct imaging research of exoplanets. 

  In this presentation, I will report the latest observation results by using our Ex-AO as a visiting instrument for high-contrast imaging on ESO’s 3.58-meter NTT telescope at LSO (Southern Sphere), and 3.5-meter ARC telescope at APO (Northern Sphere), respectively. It has demonstrated the system can be used for the scientific research of exoplanets and brown dwarfs. With an update of critical hardware, the dedicated instrument called as EDICT for imaging research of young giant exoplanets will be presented. And a preliminary design optimized for GSMT such as TMT will be also presented. Meanwhile, we have fully demonstrated in the lab a contrast on the order of 10-9 in a large detection area, which is a critical technique for future Earth-like exoplanets imaging space missions. And a space program called as CPI: JEEEDIS & ELSS will also be presented in this talk, aiming to answer “Are we alone in the universe?”, which is one of the most fundamental scientific questions.