VizieR Online Data Catalog: An updated study of potential targets for Ariel (Edwards+, 2019)

Ariel has been selected as the next ESA medium-class science mission and is due for launch in 2028. During its 4 yr mission, Ariel aims to observe ~1000 exoplanets ranging from Jupiters and Neptunes down to super-Earth size in the visible and the infrared with its meter-class telescope. During Phase A, the ESA radiometric model (Puig et al. 2015ExA....40..393P) was utilized to assess the duration and type of observations needed to meet the mission requirements. Although the Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument will also be used for spectroscopy, the mission requirements are baselined on the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) channels, as these bands are typically the most demanding. During Phase A, a study of Ariel's capabilities to observe known and predicted planets was conducted and a mission reference sample (MRS; i.e., a list of exoplanets to be observed during the primary mission life) of ~1000 potential targets was created (Zingales et al. 2018ExA....46...67Z). Planning of observations with Ariel is based around a tiered approach. As envisaged in Phase A, a survey tier aims to observe 1000 planets with low-resolution spectroscopy to produce a statistically viable data set of a diverse range of exoplanetary atmospheres. Exoplanetary data was downloaded from NASA's Exoplanet Archive in order to account for all confirmed planets before being filtered such that only transiting planets were considered. The database was last accessed on 2019 February 26.

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