Physics – Optics
Scientific paper
Dec 2009
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009agufm.p43a1425l&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2009, abstract #P43A-1425
Physics
Optics
[5704] Planetary Sciences: Fluid Planets / Atmospheres
Scientific paper
Ground-based searches have identified a number of exoplanets which transit in front of their parent stars. The Kepler mission is expected to discover hundreds or thousands of additional such transiting planets. Existing telescopes (the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, several ground-based telescopes) have performed simple, low SNR spectroscopic measurements of transiting exoplanets. To expand on this work, a dedicated mission is needed. Our mission concept has six telescopes, each 0.94 m diameter, for the purpose of high sensitivity spectroscopy of stars with known transiting planets. The six telescopes will be co-aligned, but not co-phased, and this will lower the cost in comparison to one large telescope. Light from the telescopes will be fed via fiber optics to a single spectrograph. Atmospheres of Earth-like planets are probably not detectable with this mission, but Jovian planets should be relatively easy to study. Depending on the temperature of the planet and the scale height of the constituent gas, high SNR measurements will be possible for stars as faint as magnitude 14.
Ebbets Dennis
Kaplan Marc
Kartchner C.
Linfield Roger
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