Astrometric and RV Detection of Exoplanets in the Presence of Starspots

Details Astrometric and RV Detection of Exoplanets in the Presence of Starspots Astrometric and RV Detection of Exoplanets in the Presence of Starspots

May 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009dda....40.1705u&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DDA meeting #40, #17.05; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.911

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Scientific paper

Astrometry from space will make extremely precise measurements of the positions of stars, at angular precision of well below 1 micro-arcsecond (μas) at each visit. Hundreds of visits over a period of five years could achieve a relative astrometric precision for the mission of below 0.035 μas; this is well below the astrometric signature of 0.3 μas for a Sun-Earth system at a distance of 10 pc.
Starspots introduce a source of 'astrophysical' noise into astrometric and radial velocity (RV) measurements of exoplanet signatures. We estimate the size of the effect using a dynamic starspot model that produces a time series of flux variability consistent with the measured photometric power spectra of the Sun. Except for our Sun, there is little precision stellar photometric data on the relevant timescales of months to years. Noise due to long-lived starspots is correlated from night to night and is modulated by stellar rotation. Our preliminary conclusion is that detecting a Earth-like planet orbiting in the habitable zone of a Sun-like star (amplitude 10 cm/s) will be difficult for RV for even the quietest stars because of correlations in the starspot noise. Starspot noise at a level of several times the Sun's will not interfere with astrometric detection of the Earth.
This work was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with NASA.

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