Discovery and Characterization of Transiting Super Earths Using an All-Sky Transit Survey and Follow-up by the James Webb Space Telescope

By D. Deming, Sara Seager, J. Winn, E. Miller-Ricci, M. Clampin, D. Lindler, T. Greene, D. Charbonneau, Gregory Laughlin, G. Ricker and 2 more. 2009

212 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Doppler and transit surveys are finding extrasolar planets of ever smaller mass and radius, and are now sampling the domain of super Earths (1–3R⊕). Recent results from the Doppler surveys suggest that discovery of a transiting super Earth in the habitable zone of a lower main sequence star may be possible. We evaluate the prospects for an all-sky transit survey targeted to the brightest stars, that would find the most favorable cases for photometric and spectroscopic characterization using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). We use the proposed Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) as representative of an all-sky survey. We couple the simulated TESS yield to a sensitivity model for the MIRI and NIRSpec instruments on JWST. Our sensitivity model includes all currently known and anticipated sources of random and systematic error for these instruments. We focus on the TESS planets with radii between those of Earth and Neptune. Our simulations consider secondary eclipse filter photometry using JWST/MIRI, comparing the 11 and 15 μm bands to measure CO2 absorption in super Earths, as well as JWST/NIRSpec spectroscopy of water absorption from 1.7–3.0 μm, and CO2 absorption at 4.3 μm. We find that JWST will be capable of characterizing dozens of TESS super Earths with temperatures above the habitable range, using both MIRI and NIRspec. We project that TESS will discover about eight nearby habitable transiting super Earths, all orbiting lower–main-sequence stars. The principal sources of uncertainty in the prospective JWST characterization of habitable super Earths are super-Earth frequency and the nature of super-Earth atmospheres. Based on our estimates of these uncertainties, we project that JWST will be able to measure the temperature and identify molecular absorptions (water, CO2) in one to four nearby habitable TESS super Earths orbiting lower–main-sequence stars.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/73d4707d03e98956111526e1c94b256f15610f57

How researchers see this paper

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. N. Madhusudhan
2. Jon Fortney
3. D. Charbonneau
4. D. Deming
5. A. Showman
6. Sara Seager
7. H. Knutson
8. D. Sing

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

1. D. Charbonneau
2. D. Sing
3. Jon Fortney
4. D. Deming
5. J. Winn
6. Sara Seager
7. J. D'esert
8. G. Henry

In Instrumentation

1. Jon Fortney
2. N. Madhusudhan
3. D. Charbonneau
4. A. Showman
5. H. Knutson
6. Sara Seager
7. D. Deming
8. M. Line

Citations in the corpus

• A FRAMEWORK FOR CHARACTERIZING THE ATMOSPHERES OF LOW-MASS LOW-DENSITY TRANSITING PLANETS (2013, methodology): “A systematic noise floor value of 50 ppm was adopted for the MIRI LRS simulations, shown in Figure 13, the same value used by Deming et al. (2009) in similar simulations.”
• HOW TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN CLOUDY MINI-NEPTUNES AND WATER/VOLATILE-DOMINATED SUPER-EARTHS (2013, background): “The weak scaling illustrates the great potential of transmission spectroscopy to characterize temperate and small exoplanets (Deming et al. 2009; Seager & Deming 2010).”
• A FRAMEWORK FOR QUANTIFYING THE DEGENERACIES OF EXOPLANET INTERIOR COMPOSITIONS (2009, background): “Observations will be extremely challenging, even with multiple transits (Kaltenegger & Traub 2009; Deming et al. 2009).”
• How to Characterize Habitable Worlds and Signs of Life (2017, background): “…transiting terrestrial planets around the closest stars, the JWST scheduled for launch in late 2018 (e.g., Gardner et al. 2006, Clampin et al. 2009, Deming et al. 2009, Kaltenegger & Traub 2009, Barstow & Irwin 2016) as well as upcoming ground-based telescopes (e.g., Broeg et al. 2013, Snellen et…”
• Observations of Transiting Exoplanets with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) (2014, background): “Programs challenging JWST’s ultimate levels of precision should also be carried out, e.g., detection H2O, CO2, or O3 via transmission or emission spectroscopy from potentially (or nearly) habitable super-Earths (Kaltenegger & Traub 2009; Deming et al. 2009).”
• THE FLAT TRANSMISSION SPECTRUM OF THE SUPER-EARTH GJ1214b FROM WIDE FIELD CAMERA 3 ON THE HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE (2011, methodology): “Prospects for GJ1214b Future observations with the James Webb Space Telescope (Deming et al. 2009; Kaltenegger & Traub 2009), one of the immense next generation ground-based telescopes (GMT, TMT, ELT; see Ehrenreich et al. 2006), or possibly even a dedicated campaign with current facilities, could d”
• Exoplanet Atmospheres: Physical Processes (2010, methodology): “For example, in our simulations (Deming et al. 2009), one habitable Super Earth lying at 22 parsecs distance required 85 hours of JWST/NIRSpec observations to measure carbon dioxide absorption during transit to S/N = 28.”
• INFRARED TRANSMISSION SPECTROSCOPY OF THE EXOPLANETS HD 209458b AND XO-1b USING THE WIDE FIELD CAMERA-3 ON THE HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE (2013, methodology): “Successful transmission spectroscopy of giant exoplanetary atmospheres is a crucial first step toward eventual spectroscopy of a nearby habitable super-Earth using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST, Deming et al. 2009).”
• Transit spectrophotometry of the exoplanet HD189733b. I. Searching for water but finding haze with HST NICMOS (2009, background): “Spectroscopic characterization of transiting planets with JWST NIRCam and NIRSpec are anticipated to make significant contributions to exoplanet science (Deming et al. 2009).”
• Transits and Occultations (2010, background): “Several mission concepts are being studied: theTransiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite(Deming et al. 2009) and thePLATOmission (Lindberg et al. 2009) would tile the sky with the fields-ofview of small cameras, whileLEAVITTwould have a series of telescopes on a spinning platform (Olling 2007).”
• Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA): Pulsating Variable Stars, Rotation, Convective Boundaries, and Energy Conservation (2019, background): “…Windhorst et al. 2018), assess how galaxies evolved from their formation (Zackrisson et al. 2011), observe the formation of stars from the initial stages of collapse onwards (Senarath et al. 2018), and measure the physical and chemical properties of stellar-planetary systems (Deming et al. 2009).”
• THE TRANSITING EXOPLANET SURVEY SATELLITE: SIMULATIONS OF PLANET DETECTIONS AND ASTROPHYSICAL FALSE POSITIVES (2015, methodology): “Deming et al. (2009) considered TESS specifically, but those calculations were based on an earlier design for the mission with different choices for the observing interval and duty cycle, the number of cameras and collecting area, and other key parameters.”
• Exoplanet Biosignatures: A Review of Remotely Detectable Signs of Life (2017, background): “Those planets that transit their stars are excellent candidates for atmospheric characterization through transmission spectroscopy with the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) set to launch in 2020 (Deming et al., 2009; Stevenson et al., 2016).”
• Pale Orange Dots: The Impact of Organic Haze on the Habitability and Detectability of Earthlike Exoplanets (2016, methodology): “To simulate JWST observations, we use the model described in Deming et al. (2009), and our simulated observations employ the JWST parameters described in Schwieterman et al. (2016).”
• ABIOTIC O2 LEVELS ON PLANETS AROUND F, G, K, AND M STARS: POSSIBLE FALSE POSITIVES FOR LIFE? (2015, methodology): “Already, three different classes of telescopes have been advertised as having the ability to characterize Earth-like planets: i) JWST, ii) the TPFtype telescopes mentioned above, and iii) large ground-based telescopes.”
• HABITABLE ZONES AROUND MAIN-SEQUENCE STARS: NEW ESTIMATES (2013, background): “NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), scheduled to launch in 2018, is considered to be marginally capable of obtaining a transit spectrum of an Earth-like planet orbiting a late M dwarf (Clampin et al. 2007; Kaltengger & Traub 2009; Deming et al. 2009).”
• HAZMAT. I. THE EVOLUTION OF FAR-UV AND NEAR-UV EMISSION FROM EARLY M STARS (2014, background): “…2007) to be the most sought-after candidate planet hosts as they are the most amenable to follow-up observations, including the first potentially habitable planets to be spectroscopically characterized, probably by James Webb Space Telescope transit transmission observations (Deming et al. 2009).”