The Evryscope and extrasolar planets
Abstract
The Evryscope (Law et al. 2015) is a 24-camera hemispherical all-sky gigapixel telescope (8,000 sq.deg. FoV) with rapid cadence (2mins exposure, 4sec readout) installed at CTIO. Ground-based single-station transiting surveys typically suffer from light curve sparsity and suboptimal efficiency because of their limited field of view (FoV), resulting in incomplete and biased detections. In contrast, the Evryscope offers 97% survey efficiency and one of the single-station most continuous and simultaneous monitoring of millions of stars (only limited by the day-night window).This unique facility is capable of addressing new and more extensive planetary populations, including: 1) for the first time, continuously monitor every 2mins a set of ~1000 bright white dwarfs (WDs). This will allow us to put constraints on the habitable planet fraction of Ceres-size planetesimals at the level of 30%, only in a survey timescales of a few weeks, as well as first-time testing planetary evolution models beyond the AGB phase. 2) search for rocky planets in the habitable zone around ~5,000 bright, nearby M-dwarfs. 3) synergies between Evryscope and upcoming exoplanets missions (e.g. TESS, PLATO) are also promising for target pre-imaging characterization, and increasing the giant planet yield by recovering multiple transits from planets seen as single transit events from space. 4) all-sky 2-min cadence of rare microlensing events of nearby stars. 5) all-sky continuous survey of microlensing events of nearby stars at 2mins cadence. 6) increase the census of giant planets around ~70,000 nearby, bright (g<10) solar-type stars, whose atmospheres can be characterized by follow-up observations. We are developing new data analysis algorithms to address the above scientific goals: from detecting the extremely short and faint transits around WDs, to disentangle planetary signals from very bright stars, and to combine space-based light curves with the Evryscope's ones. We will present the first results from the Evryscope, which achieved first light in 2015.
- Publication:
-
IAU General Assembly
- Pub Date:
- August 2015
- Bibcode:
- 2015IAUGA..2258237F