Other
Scientific paper
Dec 2009
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009aas...21460607e&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #214, #606.07
Other
Scientific paper
Spectroscopy of a star during a planetary transit event can provide important diagnostic information about the atmosphere of the planet. At visible and near infrared wavelengths species such as O2, H2O, CO2 and others may be detectable. Doing so requires moderate spectral resolution and very high signal to noise ratio. A telescope with a large collecting area and a spectrograph with high efficiency are thus beneficial. An instrument optimized for transit spectroscopy does not need to have a wide field of view or high spatial resolution. We propose that an instrument using an array of six small primary mirrors having the same collecting area as one larger one could be advantageous. The six collectors would need to be aligned to the same line of sight, but would not need to be phased. If the cost scales as diameter to the 2.5 power or so, an array of six 0.94m apertures could cost about 60% as much as a single 2.4m telescope. If the six apertures feed their light to a single spectrograph using optical fibers, the smaller instrument would also be less expensive. There will be dozens, probably hundreds of stars with transiting planets known within a few years. There could easily be several events every week, each lasting from a few hours to most of a day. A mission dedicated to observing virtually every transit that is predicted to occur could therefore be kept very busy. To allow nearly every event to be observable the instrument would need to be in a heliocentric orbit to eliminate blockage by the earth, it will need a large field of regard to minimize solar avoidance constraints, and must contain adequate on-board storage to accommodate a very data-rich observing mission.
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