Effects of thermal and exozodiacal background on space telescope observations of exoEarths
Abstract
One of the major goals of the exoplanet community in the coming decades is to detect Earth-like exoplanets (exoEarths) and look for biomarkers in their atmospheres. High-dispersion coronagraphy (HDC) may allow detection and characterization to be done simultaneously, as well as relax the starlight suppression requirements of the telescope and coronagraph. However, similar to other direct imaging techniques, HDC faces challenging thermal and/or exozodiacal background levels. In this paper, we present simulations of coronagraphic observations using a variety of space telescope apertures ranging in diameter from 1 to 15 m, specifically incorporating thermal and exozodiacal background. We investigate the effects of instrument temperature and aperture on the maximum usable wavelength, as well as the effects of exozodiacal disk inclination and thickness on observational SNR. We then identify the spectral resolutions which maximize observational SNR subject to detector noise and the required starlight suppression levels for the detection of various potential biomarker molecules (H_2O, O_2, CO_2, and CH_4).
Additional Information
© 2018 Society of Photo-optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). We thank Renyu Hu for providing the atmospheric models used in this paper. This work was supported by an appointment to the NASA Postdoctoral Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, administered by the Universities Space Research Association under contract with NASA. Copyright 2018 California Institute of Technology. Government Sponsorship acknowledged. All rights reserved.Attached Files
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 91569
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20181207-104605941
- NASA Postdoctoral Program
- Created
-
2018-12-07Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2021-11-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Series Name
- Proceedings of SPIE
- Series Volume or Issue Number
- 10698