EPOXI at Earth's Poles: Empirical Test for Observations of an Exoplanet at High Obliquity

Details EPOXI at Earth's Poles: Empirical Test for Observations of an Exoplanet at High Obliquity EPOXI at Earth's Poles: Empirical Test for Observations of an Exoplanet at High Obliquity

Sep 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009dps....41.0811l&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #41, #8.11

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

Observations of the Earth have been obtained by the EPOXI mission to investigate empirically the visible-to-near infrared spectral distribution and lightcurve variations of the Earth as a model for terrestrial exoplanets. Exoplanetary systems may be at arbitrary inclination to the solar system, and may include planets of arbitrary obliquity. The EPOXI mission has previously observed the Earth from within the ecliptic plane and has now acquired measurements at high northern and southern sub-spacecraft latitude with nearly identical phase angle and range. On 27-28 Mar 2009 UT, the whole disc of the Earth was observed from a sub-spacecraft latitude of 62°N at 87° phase angle (53.5% illumination) and 0.114 AU range. On 27 Sep 2009, Earth will have been observed from a sub-spacecraft latitude of 74°S at 87° phase angle (52.7% illumination) and 0.115 AU range. The Earth was near the spring equinox of each pole as it was observed. The visible-light signal was sampled with 7 filters of approximately 100 nm width at 100 nm spacing over 350-950 nm central wavelength, at 15-minute intervals in 4 selected filters and 1-hour intervals in the remaining 3 filters. Near-IR spectroscopy at 1-4.8 µm was obtained at 2-hour intervals. These polar data, capturing the polar ice caps and high latitude climatic regions, will be compared to similar data previously acquired from over the equator, to investigate distinctions in the ability to discern from the global average the spectroscopic signature of vegetation and biogenic gas species.
This work is supported by the NASA Discovery Program.

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