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Published October 2012 | public
Journal Article

SPICES: spectro-polarimetric imaging and characterization of exoplanetary systems

Abstract

SPICES (Spectro-Polarimetric Imaging and Characterization of Exoplanetary Systems) is a five-year M-class mission proposed to ESA Cosmic Vision. Its purpose is to image and characterize long-period extrasolar planets and circumstellar disks in the visible (450–900 nm) at a spectral resolution of about 40 using both spectroscopy and polarimetry. By 2020/2022, present and near-term instruments will have found several tens of planets that SPICES will be able to observe and study in detail. Equipped with a 1.5 m telescope, SPICES can preferentially access exoplanets located at several AUs (0.5–10 AU) from nearby stars (<25 pc) with masses ranging from a few Jupiter masses to Super Earths (∼2 Earth radii, ∼10 M⊕) as well as circumstellar disks as faint as a few times the zodiacal light in the Solar System.

Additional Information

© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. Received: 9 May 2011; Accepted: 6 February 2012; Published online: 29 February 2012. We would like to thanks H. Boithias, E. Sein at ASTRIUM France for their technical support and A. Laurens, O. Lamarle at CNES for both financial and technical support during this ESA Cosmic Vision proposal study. We are also grateful to the referee for relevant comments which helped to improve this paper.

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 23, 2023