Jenam 2010 Exoplanet Targets for Upcoming Cosmic Visions Space Missions James Frith September 8 th 2010 University of Hertfordshire

Outline Simulations Updates London THESIS Meeting The US Decadal Survey and Implications to Cosmic Visions

Review: Many of the newly proposed exoplanet characterization space missions still lack a sufficient target list

Stellar Population ~ 9000 Stars taken from Gliese and Hipparcos Distance cut off at 50 PC Spectral type KFM with no significant deviations from the main sequence

Planet Properties Current empirical and theoretical properties of exoplanets used for simulated population Mass – Power law fit Radius (theoretical: Fortney et al 2007) Semi-major axis – Power law fit Random inclination assigned

Simulation update Added Majority of Mearth candidate stars to increase the stellar sampling Successfully doubled the number of observable transiting planets from 6 to 12 Now working with data from collaborators at UCL to determine observability of simulated targets based on proposed THESIS sensitivities Tuning results and writing paper...

London THESIS Meeting

THESIS-Transiting Habitable-Zone ExoPlanet Spectroscopy Infrared Spacecraft Solar panel / sun shield 1.4m Telescope Spectrometers Spacecraft Bus 3 key science questions: What are the conditions, composition and chemistry of exoplanet atmospheres How do dynamics affect atmospheric composition and chemistry Are biologically important molecules present in habitable-zone rocky or ocean worlds

London THESIS Meeting Presented my simulation results and collaborated with members of the THESIS team at UCL Working to combine THESIS sensitivities to current simulated planet population Proposal for a scaled down version of THESIS, known now simply as THESIS lite Added to the target selection committee Meeting in Barcelona end of this month M-Class Proposal Deadline is December this year for a potential launch in 2022

U.S. Astronomy Decadal Survey Report by the National Research Council released on Friday the 13th, August 2010 Identified what research topics are important for the US over the next 10 years Not surprisingly, exoplanet research was highly emphasized

Their Top Space Priority: The satellite formally known as JDEM – WFIRST 1.5-meter aperture HgCdTe detectors 144 megapixels Angular resolution of 200 milliarcseconds L2 Orbit Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope

Like its predecessor, WFIRST's primary mission would be for Dark Energy research Will image about 2 billion galaxies and carry out a detailed study of weak lensing that will provide distance and rate-of-growth information Major contribution to exoplanet research done through a Microlensing survey Mission

Implications for Cosmic Visions Significant similarities between Euclid and WFIRST Euclid's design more mature than WFIRST, but Europe most likely will have to outsource detector technology requirements to the US Decadal survey may influence ESA to choose Euclid over Plato and go for a joint mission with NASA

Thanks

BACKUP

Simulated Transits Full Deep Shallow