On the 'Obscuration Completeness' of Direct Searches for Extrasolar Planets

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

Scientific paper

Rate now

  [ 0.00 ] – not rated yet Voters 0   Comments 0

Details

Scientific paper

The completeness of extrasolar planet searches by direct imaging is reduced because the instrument obscures some possible planets. The glare of starlight--or an instrument feature designed to control it, such as a coronagraphic mask or an interferometric null--obscures planets occuring closer to the star than some minimum apparent separation. Some possible planets will never occur unobscured; some that are obscured at random epoch will become unobscured at a later time; some are never obscured. These aspects of 'obscuration completeness' must be analyzed and understood to optimize and compare instruments and observing programs proposed to discover extrasolar planets by direct imaging. This paper reports on the tradeoff between the size of the obscuration and the number of optimally-timed target observing revisits for the case of 'habitable zone' searches of 30 nearby stars achieving 95% obscuration completeness.
The Space Telescope Science Institute is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555.

No associations

LandOfFree

Say what you really think

Search LandOfFree.com for scientists and scientific papers. Rate them and share your experience with other people.

Rating

On the 'Obscuration Completeness' of Direct Searches for Extrasolar Planets does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with On the 'Obscuration Completeness' of Direct Searches for Extrasolar Planets, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and On the 'Obscuration Completeness' of Direct Searches for Extrasolar Planets will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

     

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1374251

  Search
All data on this website is collected from public sources. Our data reflects the most accurate information available at the time of publication.