Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
Sep 2011
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011ess.....2.4105t&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, ESS meeting #2, #41.05
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Scientific paper
The science of extra-solar planets is one of the most rapidly changing areas of astrophysics and since 1995 the number of planets known has increased by almost two orders of magnitude. A combination of ground-based surveys and ded-icated space missions has resulted in 540-plus planets being detected, and over 1200 that await confirmation. NASA’s Kepler mission has opened up the possibility of discovering Earth-like planets in the habitable zone around some of the 100,000 stars it is surveying during its 3 to 4-year lifetime. The new Gaia mission is expected to discover thousands of new planets around stars within 200 parsecs of the Sun. Yet among the exoplanets detected or proposed, so far there is actually little resemblance to the morphology of the Solar System.
The key challenge now is moving on from discovery, important though that remains, to characterisation: what are these planets actually like, and why are they as they are?
In the past ten years, we have learned how to obtain the first spectra of exoplanets using transit transmission and emission spectroscopy. With the high stability of Spitzer, Hubble, and large ground-based telescopes the spectra of bright close-in massive planets can be obtained and species like water vapour, methane, carbon monoxide and dioxide have been detected.
The Exoplanet Characterisation Observatory, EChO, will be a dedicated mission to investigate the physics and chemistry of exoplanetary atmospheres. EChO has been selected by the European Space Agency to be assessed as one of four M3 mission candidates. By characterising spectroscopically more bodies in different environments we will take detailed planetology out of the Solar System and into the Galaxy as a whole.
EChO Team
Tinetti Giovanna
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