SPECULOOS: a network of robotic telescopes to hunt for terrestrial planets around the nearest ultracool dwarfs
Abstract
We present here SPECULOOS, a new exoplanet transit search based on a network of 1m-class robotic telescopes targeting the 1200 ultracool (spectral type M7 and later) dwarfs bright enough in the infrared (K-mag <= 12.5) to possibly enable the atmospheric characterization of temperate terrestrial planets with next-generation facilities like the James Webb Space Telescope. The ultimate goals of the project are to reveal the frequency of temperate terrestrial planets around the lowest-mass stars and brown dwarfs, to probe the diversity of their bulk compositions, atmospheres and surface conditions, and to assess their potential habitability.
- Publication:
-
Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes VII
- Pub Date:
- July 2018
- DOI:
- 10.1117/12.2312475
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1806.11205
- Bibcode:
- 2018SPIE10700E..1ID
- Keywords:
-
- Astrophysics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics;
- Astrophysics - Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- 21 pages, 13 figures, 1 table. Proceedings of SPIE