A STELLAR CORONOGRAPH FOR THE COME-ON-PLUS ADAPTIVE OPTICS SYSTEM .1.DESCRIPTION AND PERFORMANCE

The detection of faint emissions very close to much brighter objects i s required in several different fields of astrophysics, for example in the search for planetary disks. We present here a coronograph that we built to work with COME-ON-PLUS, the ESO adaptive optics system, high angular resolution being of key importance in allowing observations c lose to a central, occulted object. The first results are presented an d analyzed in order to establish the performance of this instrument in terms of contrast and detectability of faint emissions close to a cen tral star.