Optimized Planet Searches and the Terrestrial Planet Finder Coronagraph Mission: An Informed Shot in the Dark

The Monte Carlo Method introduced in a companion paper is applied to candidate designs for the Terrestrial Planet Finder Coronagraph mission (TPF-C). This method utilizes information from previous observations to calculate optimized revisit intervals for subsequent visits. These optimized revisit intervals are compared with current observation plans utilizing fixed or random revisit intervals. It will be shown that application of the optimized revisit time results in a marked increase in the efficiency of this type of search, both in terms of completeness and numbers of potential planets detected.