Inferring statistics of planet populations by means of automated microlensing searches

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics

Scientific paper

Rate now

  [ 0.00 ] – not rated yet Voters 0   Comments 0

Details

10 pages in PDF format. White paper submitted to ESA's Exo-Planet Roadmap Advisory Team (EPR-AT); typos corrected. The embedde

Scientific paper

(abridged) The study of other worlds is key to understanding our own, and not only provides clues to the origin of our civilization, but also looks into its future. Rather than in identifying nearby systems and learning about their individual properties, the main value of the technique of gravitational microlensing is in obtaining the statistics of planetary populations within the Milky Way and beyond. Only the complementarity of different techniques currently employed promises to yield a complete picture of planet formation that has sufficient predictive power to let us understand how habitable worlds like ours evolve, and how abundant such systems are in the Universe. A cooperative three-step strategy of survey, follow-up, and anomaly monitoring of microlensing targets, realized by means of an automated expert system and a network of ground-based telescopes is ready right now to be used to obtain a first census of cool planets with masses reaching even below that of Earth orbiting K and M dwarfs in two distinct stellar populations, namely the Galactic bulge and disk. The hunt for extra-solar planets acts as a principal science driver for time-domain astronomy with robotic-telescope networks adopting fully-automated strategies. Several initiatives, both into facilities as well as into advanced software and strategies, are supposed to see the capabilities of gravitational microlensing programmes step-wise increasing over the next 10 years. New opportunities will show up with high-precision astrometry becoming available and studying the abundance of planets around stars in neighbouring galaxies becoming possible. Finally, we should not miss out on sharing the vision with the general public, and make its realization to profit not only the scientists but all the wider society.

No associations

LandOfFree

Say what you really think

Search LandOfFree.com for scientists and scientific papers. Rate them and share your experience with other people.

Rating

Inferring statistics of planet populations by means of automated microlensing searches does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Inferring statistics of planet populations by means of automated microlensing searches, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Inferring statistics of planet populations by means of automated microlensing searches will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

     

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-643012

  Search
All data on this website is collected from public sources. Our data reflects the most accurate information available at the time of publication.