Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2006-06-30
Astrophys.Space Sci.306:147-158,2006
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
21 pages, 8 figures; TBP in Astrophysics and Space Science 2006
Scientific paper
10.1007/s10509-006-9183-z
The requirements on space missions designed to study Terrestrial exoplanets are discussed. We then investigate whether the design of such a mission, specifically the Darwin nulling interferometer, can be carried out in a simplified scenario. The key element here is accepting somewhat higher levels of stellar leakage. We establish detailed requirements resulting from the scientific rationale for the mission, and calculate detailed parameters for the stellar suppression required to achieve those requirements. We do this utilizing the Darwin input catalogue. The dominating noise source for most targets in this sample is essentially constant for all targets, while the leakage diminishes with the square of the distance. This means that the stellar leakage has an effect on the integration time only for the nearby stars, while for the more distant targets its influence decreases significantly. We assess the impact of different array configurations and nulling profiles and identify the stars for which the detection efficiency can be maximized.
Fridlund Malcolm
Kaltenegger Lisa
Karlsson Anders
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