Worlds Beyond: A Strategy for the Detection and Characterization of Exoplanets

Lunine, Jonathan I.; Fischer, Debra; Hammel, H. B.; Hillenbrand, L.; Kasting, James F.; Laughlin, Gregory; Macintosh, Bruce; Marley, Mark S.; Melnick, Gary; Monet, D. G.; Noecker, Charley; Peale, S.; Quirrenbach, A.; Seager, Sara; Winn, J. N.

doi:10.2172/945593

Cited by 21 publications

(24 citation statements)

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“…2 shows, the combination of transit and microlensing surveys provides a fortuitous coverage of the equivalent around other stars of the entire inner solar system and intermediate region almost out to Jupiter. However, the survey must be done from space because it is too easy for a single ground-based telescope to miss a secondary (planetary) event thanks to weather and the rotation of the Earth; even a network of ground-based telescopes is less efficient than a spaceborne observatory [15] and would cover only a small range of semi-major axes. Two possible space-based microlensing survey opportunities will present themselves.…”

Section: Radii: Transit Results From the Ground And Spacementioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the other hand, increasing sensitivity of astrometric observations with planet-star separations out to 5-10 AU (figure 3) means that astrometric measurements seeking an Earth in the habitable zone are potentially susceptible to confusion from more distant planets in the same system with orbital periods longer than the time span of the observations. radial velocity followup of astrometric signatures could potentially be useful in resolving such ambiguities [15].…”

Section: Required Accuracies From Astrometry Applied To Radial Velocitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Future prospects for the detection and characterization of extrasolar planets

Lunine

2010

EPJ Web of Conferences

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Abstract. Several distinctly different techniques have detected almost 500 planets orbiting around main-sequence stars, 45 multiple planet systems, and a number of extrasolar planets have been the subject of direct study. Hundreds of other "candidate" planets detected by the Kepler spacecraft await confirmation of their existence. Planets are thus common phenomena around stars, and the prospects seem good in the next few years for establishing statistics on the occurrence of Earth-sized planets. Extension of the most successful technique of Doppler spectroscopy in sensitivity to detect Earth-mass planets around Sun-like stars will be limited by the noise generated by the stellar photospheres themselves. The James Webb Space Telescope will have the capability to measure atmospheric abundances of certain gases and of liquid water on extrasolar planets, including "superEarths" within a factor of two of the radius of the Earth. The ultimate goal of measuring the atmospheric composition of an Earth-sized planet orbiting at 1 AU around a star like the Sun remains a daunting challenge that is perhaps twenty years in the future.

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Section: Radii: Transit Results From the Ground And Spacementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Required Accuracies From Astrometry Applied To Radial Velocitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Future prospects for the detection and characterization of extrasolar planets

Lunine

2010

EPJ Web of Conferences

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“…The relations used compute raw contrast and not the effective contrast limits for detection; I therefore assume that observational and post-processing techniques can suppress the instantaneous PSF contrast by a factor of 30 at all angular separations; current techniques achieve suppression factors of 20 to several hundred at separations as small as 4.5λ/D (Marois et al 2008;Crepp et al 2011;Vogt et al 2011), so the value assumed here may be somewhat conservative. Finally, following Lunine et al (2008) I impose an absolute contrast floor of 5 × 10 −9 in all cases. The result is a simulation of high-contrast performance with the phenomenologically correct dependencies on wavelength, telescope size, stellar flux, and other parameters 2 .…”

Section: Estimating High-contrast Instrument Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

On high-contrast characterization of nearby, short-period exoplanets with giant segmented-mirror telescopes

Crossfield

2013

A&A

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Measurements of the frequency with which short-period planets occur around main sequence stars allows a direct prediction of the number and types of such planets that will be amenable to characterization by high-contrast instruments on future giant segmentedmirror telescopes (GSMTs). Adopting conservative assumptions, I predict of order 10 planets with radii R P = 1−8 R ⊕ and equilibrium temperatures 400 K should be accessible around stars within 8 pc of the Sun. These numbers are roughly the same for both nearinfrared observations of scattered starlight and mid-infrared observations of planetary thermal emission, with the latter observations demonstrating greater relative sensitivity to smaller and cooler planets. Adopting the conservative assumption that planets with R P = 1−2 R ⊕ and 2−4 R ⊕ occur with equal frequency, I predict a 40% chance that a planet with R P = 1−2 R ⊕ and equilibrium temperature 200-250 K will accessible to high-contrast thermal infrared characterization; this would be a compelling object for further study. To validate these predictions, more detailed analyses are needed of the occurrence frequencies of low-mass planets around M dwarfs, both in the Kepler field and in the solar neighborhood. Several planets already discovered by radial velocity surveys will be accessible to near-infrared high-contrast GSMT observations, including the low-mass planets α Cen Bb and (depending on their albedos) GJ 139c and d, GJ 876b and c, and τ Cet b, c, and d; τ Cet f would be amenable to thermal infrared characterization. Further efforts to model the near-infrared reflectance and mid-infrared emission of these and other short-period planets are clearly warranted, and will pave the way for the interpretation of future high-contrast characterization of a variety of planets around the nearest stars.

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“…The scientific driver for this effort is the identification of potentially habitable planets (Lunine et al 2008) Not every rocky planet is likely to host detectable life, so ideally, we would like to find many rocky planets.…”

Section: Gas Giant Exoplanets Are Already Being Characterizedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Combining laser frequency combs and iodine cell calibration techniques for Doppler detection of exoplanets

et al. 2010

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Exoplanets can be detected from a time series of stellar spectra by looking for small, periodic shifts in the absorption features that are consistent with Doppler shifts caused by the presence of an exoplanet, or multiple exoplanets, in the system. While hundreds of large exoplanets have already been discovered with the Doppler technique (also called radial velocity), our goal is to improve the measurement precision so that many Earth-like planets can be detected. The smaller mass and longer period of true Earth analogues require the ability to detect a reflex velocity of ~10 cm/s over long time periods. Currently, typical astronomical spectrographs calibrate using either Iodine absorptive cells or Thorium Argon lamps and achieve ~10 m/s precision, with the most stable spectrographs pushing down to ~2 m/s. High velocity precision is currently achieved at HARPS by controlling the thermal and pressure environment of the spectrograph. These environmental controls increase the cost of the spectrograph, and it is not feasible to simply retrofit existing spectrometers. We propose a fiber-fed high precision spectrograph design that combines the existing ~5000-6000 A Iodine calibration system with a high-precision Laser Frequency Comb (LFC) system from ~6000-7000 A that just meets the redward side of the Iodine lines. The scientific motivation for such a system includes: a 1000 A span in the red is currently achievable with LFC systems, combining the two calibration methods increases the wavelength range by a factor of two, and moving redward decreases the "noise" from starspots. The proposed LFC system design employs a fiber laser, tunable serial Fabry-Perot cavity filters to match the resolution of the LFC system to that of standard astronomical spectrographs, and terminal ultrasonic vibration of the multimode fiber for a stable point spread function.

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Worlds Beyond: A Strategy for the Detection and Characterization of Exoplanets

Cited by 21 publications

References 0 publications

Future prospects for the detection and characterization of extrasolar planets

Future prospects for the detection and characterization of extrasolar planets

On high-contrast characterization of nearby, short-period exoplanets with giant segmented-mirror telescopes

Combining laser frequency combs and iodine cell calibration techniques for Doppler detection of exoplanets

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