In recent years a large number of planets have been discovered around stars other than our Sun with ground-based and space-borne instrumentation, using a variety of techniques and state of the art detection techniques. With more than 3,500 confirmed exoplanets to date and thousands more awaiting confirmation, instrumentation is evolving very fast to hunt for more challenging systems in terms of sizes and temperatures.
The imaging as well as the physical and chemical characterization of these alien worlds is one of the next, most fascinating and challenging endeavours waiting ahead. The field is rapidly evolving through existing, soon-to-be in operation and proposed instrumentation, and with that is our knowledge of the Galaxy and of our own Solar System. The goal of this section is to bring together the experimental and observational community which will underpin the future of this field.