Science Performance of the Pupil-mapping Exoplanet Coronagraphic Observer (PECO)

Details Science Performance of the Pupil-mapping Exoplanet Coronagraphic Observer (PECO) Science Performance of the Pupil-mapping Exoplanet Coronagraphic Observer (PECO)

Sep 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009dps....41.1618c&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #41, #16.18

Computer Science

Performance

Scientific paper

The PECO mission concept uses a D = 1.4 meter space-based telescope with a phase-induced amplitude apodization (PIAA) coronagraph to take high contrast ( 1e-10), high spatial resolution ( 100 mas) optical images of extrasolar systems with targets as close as 2 lambda/D to the host star over a 400-900 nm band. We use models of the PIAA system and of target systems (with Earth-like and gas giant planets, as well as interesting exozodiacal dust disks) to simulate the science images expected from PECO. These results allow us to evaluate the science performance of a PECO-sized PIAA coronagraph and to optimize tradeoffs in system and spacecraft-level requirements. We also use the simulation results to develop and refine our observing plans to correspond to a planned 3-year mission lifetime. With PECO, we will detect and characterize Earth-like exoplanets, follow up on planets detected with radial-velocity methods, and image exozodiacal disks and gas giants. Our results indicate that PECO can detect planets with 1-2 Earth radii and Earth-like albedos in the habitable zones of tens of nearby FGK stars with integration times of less than 1 day each. PECO can characterize giant planets around over a hundred stars in the same period of time, including a dozen planets already detected using radial velocity (RV) methods. Over its 3-year planned mission lifetime, PECO will survey about twenty nearby stars for Earth-like planets with multiple visits for high completeness, will confirm and characterize about a dozen RV-detected planets, and will make single observations of over a hundred stars for giant planets and dust disk structures. These same observations will also contribute to the detection and characterization of circumstellar dust disks. Detected planets will have extended follow-up observations in order to achieve SNRs of about 30 to characterize their spectral features and constrain their temperatures and orbits.

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