SPICES: Spectro-Polarimetric Imaging and Characterization of Exoplanetary Systems

Abstract

SPICES (Spectro-Polarimetric Imaging and Characterization of Exoplanetary Systems) is a five-year M-class mission proposed to ESA Cosmic Vision. Its purpose is to image and characterize long-period extrasolar planets and circumstellar disks in the visible (450 - 900 nm) at a spectral resolution of about 40 using both spectroscopy and polarimetry. By 2020/22, present and near-term instruments will have found several tens of planets that SPICES will be able to observe and study in detail. Equipped with a 1.5 m telescope, SPICES can preferentially access exoplanets located at several AUs (0.5-10 AU) from nearby stars ($<$25 pc) with masses ranging from a few Jupiter masses to Super Earths ($\sim$2 Earth radii, $\sim$10 M${}_{\oplus }$) as well as circumstellar disks as faint as a few times the zodiacal light in the Solar System.

References in corpus (7)

• Direct Imaging of Multiple Planets Orbiting the Star HR 8799
• Optical Images of an Exosolar Planet 25 Light Years from Earth
• The Occurrence and Mass Distribution of Close-in Super-Earths, Neptunes, and Jupiters
• Spectropolarimetric signatures of Earth-like extrasolar planets
• Double-blind test program for astrometric planet detection with Gaia
• Wavefront error correction and Earth-like planet detection by Self-Coherent Camera in space
• Prototyping coronagraphs for exoplanet characterization with SPHERE

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Phase Quantization Study of Spatial Light Modulator for Extreme High contrast Imaging
• PULSE: The Palomar Ultraviolet Laser for the Study of Exoplanets