TY - JOUR
T1 - The Direct Mid-infrared Detectability of Habitable-zone Exoplanets around Nearby Stars
AU - Werber, Zach
AU - Wagner, Kevin
AU - Apai, Dániel
N1 - Funding Information:
The results reported herein benefited from collaborations and/or information exchange within the program “Alien Earths” (supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under Agreement No. 80NSSC21K0593) for NASA's Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS) research coordination network sponsored by NASA's Science Mission Directorate. K.W. acknowledges support from NASA through the NASA Hubble Fellowship grant No. HST-HF2-51472.001-A awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Incorporated, under NASA contract NAS5-26555. We acknowledge the use of the software packages SciPy (Virtanen et al. ), NumPy (Harris et al. ), matplotlib (Hunter ), and pandas (McKinney , ). The citations in this paper have made use of NASA's Astrophysics Data System Bibliographic Services.
Funding Information:
The results reported herein benefited from collaborations and/or information exchange within the program “Alien Earths” (supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under Agreement No. 80NSSC21K0593) for NASA's Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS) research coordination network sponsored by NASA's Science Mission Directorate. K.W. acknowledges support from NASA through the NASA Hubble Fellowship grant No. HST-HF2-51472.001-A awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Incorporated, under NASA contract NAS5-26555. We acknowledge the use of the software packages SciPy (Virtanen et al. 2020), NumPy (Harris et al. 2020), matplotlib (Hunter 2007), and pandas (McKinney 2010, 2011). The citations in this paper have made use of NASA's Astrophysics Data System Bibliographic Services.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.
PY - 2023/3/1
Y1 - 2023/3/1
N2 - Giant planets within the habitable zones of the closest several stars can currently be imaged with ground-based telescopes. Within the next decade, the Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs) will begin to image the habitable zones of a greater number of nearby stars with much higher sensitivity, potentially imaging exo-Earths around the closest stars. To determine the most promising candidates for observations over the next decade, we establish a theoretical framework for the direct detectability of Earth- to super-Jovian-mass exoplanets in the mid-infrared based on available atmospheric and evolutionary models. Of the 83 closest BAFGK-type stars, we select 37 FGK-type stars within 10 pc and 34 BA-type stars within 30 pc with reliable age constraints. We prioritize targets based on a parametric model of a planet’s effective temperature based on a star's luminosity, distance, and age, and on the planet’s orbital semimajor axis, radius, and albedo. We then predict the most likely planets to be detectable with current 8 m telescopes and with a 39 m ELT with up to 100 hr of observation per star. Putting this together, we recommend observation times needed for the detection of habitable-zone exoplanets spanning the range from very nearby temperate Earth-sized planets to more distant young giant planets. We then recommend ideal initial targets for current telescopes and the upcoming ELTs.
AB - Giant planets within the habitable zones of the closest several stars can currently be imaged with ground-based telescopes. Within the next decade, the Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs) will begin to image the habitable zones of a greater number of nearby stars with much higher sensitivity, potentially imaging exo-Earths around the closest stars. To determine the most promising candidates for observations over the next decade, we establish a theoretical framework for the direct detectability of Earth- to super-Jovian-mass exoplanets in the mid-infrared based on available atmospheric and evolutionary models. Of the 83 closest BAFGK-type stars, we select 37 FGK-type stars within 10 pc and 34 BA-type stars within 30 pc with reliable age constraints. We prioritize targets based on a parametric model of a planet’s effective temperature based on a star's luminosity, distance, and age, and on the planet’s orbital semimajor axis, radius, and albedo. We then predict the most likely planets to be detectable with current 8 m telescopes and with a 39 m ELT with up to 100 hr of observation per star. Putting this together, we recommend observation times needed for the detection of habitable-zone exoplanets spanning the range from very nearby temperate Earth-sized planets to more distant young giant planets. We then recommend ideal initial targets for current telescopes and the upcoming ELTs.
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U2 - 10.3847/1538-3881/acaf5d
DO - 10.3847/1538-3881/acaf5d
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85149144463
SN - 0004-6256
VL - 165
JO - Astronomical Journal
JF - Astronomical Journal
IS - 3
M1 - 133
ER -