Jenam 2010

Exoplanet Targets for Upcoming Cosmic Visions Space Missions

James FrithSeptember 8th 2010

University of Hertfordshire

Outline

Simulations Updates London THESIS Meeting The US Decadal Survey and Implications to Cosmic Visions

Review:

Many of the newly proposed exoplanet characterization space missions still lack a sufficient target list

Stellar Population

~ 9000 Stars taken from Gliese and Hipparcos

Distance cut off at 50 PC

Spectral type KFM with no significant deviations from the main sequence

Planet Properties

Current empirical and theoretical properties of exoplanets used for simulated population

Mass – Power law fit Radius (theoretical: Fortney et al 2007) Semi-major axis – Power law fit Random inclination assigned

Simulation update

Added Majority of Mearth candidate stars to increase the stellar sampling Successfully doubled the number of observable transiting planets from 6 to 12 Now working with data from collaborators at UCL to determine observability of simulated targets based on proposed THESIS sensitivities Tuning results and writing paper...

London THESIS Meeting

THESIS-Transiting Habitable-Zone ExoPlanet Spectroscopy Infrared Spacecraft

Solar panel / sun shield

1.4m Telescope

Spectrometers Spacecraft Bus

3 key science questions: What are the conditions, composition

and chemistry of exoplanet atmospheres

How do dynamics affect atmospheric composition and chemistry

Are biologically important molecules present in habitable-zone rocky or ocean worlds

London THESIS Meeting

Presented my simulation results and collaborated with members of the THESIS team at UCL Working to combine THESIS sensitivities to current simulated planet population Proposal for a scaled down version of THESIS, known now simply as THESIS lite Added to the target selection committee Meeting in Barcelona end of this month M-Class Proposal Deadline is December this year for a potential launch in 2022

U.S. Astronomy Decadal Survey

Report by the National Research Council released on Friday the 13th, August 2010

Identified what research topics are important for the US over the next 10 years

Not surprisingly, exoplanet research was highly emphasized

Their Top Space Priority:The satellite formally known as JDEM – WFIRST

1.5-meter aperture HgCdTe detectors 144 megapixels Angular resolution of 200 milliarcseconds L2 Orbit

Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope

Like its predecessor, WFIRST's primary mission would be for Dark Energy research

Will image about 2 billion galaxies and carry out a detailed study of weak lensing that will provide distance and rate-of-growth information

Major contribution to exoplanet research done through a Microlensing survey

Mission

Implications for Cosmic Visions

Significant similarities between Euclid and WFIRST Euclid's design more mature than WFIRST, but Europe most likely will have to outsource detector technology requirements to the US Decadal survey may influence ESA to choose Euclid over Plato and go for a joint mission with NASA

Thanks

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Simulated Transits

Full

DeepShallow