Can Ground-based Telescopes Detect The Oxygen 1.27 Micron Absorption Feature as a Biomarker in Exoplanets ?

Abstract

The oxygen absorption line imprinted in the scattered light from the Earth-like planets has been considered the most promising metabolic biomarker of the exo-life. We examine the feasibility of the detection of the 1.27 micron oxygen band from habitable exoplanets, in particular, around late- type stars observed with a future instrument on a 30 m class ground-based telescope. We analyzed the night airglow around 1.27 micron with IRCS/echelle spectrometer on Subaru and found that the strong telluric emission from atmospheric oxygen molecules declines by an order of magnitude by midnight. By compiling nearby star catalogs combined with the sky background model, we estimate the detectability of the oxygen absorption band from an Earth twin, if it exists, around nearby stars. We find that the most dominant source of photon noise for the oxygen 1.27 micron band detection comes from the night airglow if the contribution of the stellar PSF halo is suppressed enough to detect the planet. We conclude that the future detectors for which the detection contrast is limited by photon noise can detect the oxygen 1.27 micron absorption band of the Earth twins for ~50 candidates of the late type star. This paper demonstrates the importance of deploying small inner working angle efficient coronagraph and extreme adaptive optics on extremely large telescopes, and clearly shows that doing so will enable study of potentially habitable planets.

11 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal

References in corpus (34)

• HEALPix -- a Framework for High Resolution Discretization, and Fast Analysis of Data Distributed on the Sphere
• The VizieR database of Astronomical Catalogues
• An absolutely calibrated effective temperature scale from the InfraRed Flux Method
• Contributions to the Nearby Stars (NStars) Project: Spectroscopy of Stars Earlier than M0 within 40 parsecs: The Southern Sample
• Biosignatures from Earth-Like Planets Around M Dwarfs
• Contributions to the Nearby Stars (NStars) Project: Spectroscopy of Stars Earlier than M0 within 40 parsecs: The Northern Sample I
• On the use of empirical bolometric corrections for stars
• A library of high resolution synthetic stellar spectra from 300nm to 1.8 micron with solar and alpha-enhanced composition
• A Catalog of Northern Stars With Annual Proper Motions Larger Than 0.15 Seconds of Arc (LSPM catalog - North)
• Spectral signatures of photosynthesis II: coevolution with other stars and the atmosphere on extrasolar worlds
• An All-Sky Catalog of Bright M Dwarfs
• Spectro-Thermometry of M dwarfs and their candidate planets: too hot, too cool, or just right?
• Characterization of extrasolar terrestrial planets from diurnal photometric variability
• M dwarfs: effective temperatures, radii and metallicities
• The transmission spectrum of Earth through lunar eclipse observations
• A New High Contrast Imaging Program at Palomar Observatory
• Microslit Nod-shuffle Spectroscopy - a technique for achieving very high densities of spectra
• Mapping Earth Analogs from Photometric Variability: Spin-Orbit Tomography for Planets in Inclined Orbits
• Deciphering Spectral Fingerprints of Habitable Extrasolar Planets
• The case for OH suppression at near-infrared wavelengths
• Climate instability on tidally locked exoplanets
• Colors of a Second Earth II: Effects of Clouds on Photometric Characterization of Earth-like Exoplanets
• Mapping Clouds and Terrain of Earth-like Planets from Photometric Variability: Demonstration with Planets in Face-on Orbits
• Self-coherent camera as a focal plane wavefront sensor: simulations
• OHS: OH-airglow Suppressor for the Subaru Telescope
• High dynamic range imaging by pupil single-mode filtering and remapping
• Cool Subdwarf Investigations II: Multiplicity
• Coronagraphic Low Order Wave Front Sensor : post-processing sensitivity enhancer for high performance coronagraphs
• Characterizing the atmospheres of transiting rocky planets around late type dwarfs
• Terrestrial Planet Finder Coronagraph (TPF-C) Flight Baseline Concept
• The infrared imaging spectrograph (IRIS) for TMT: spectrograph design
• Post processing of differential images for direct extrasolar planet detection from the ground
• A Multi-wavelength Differential Imaging Experiment for the High Contrast Imaging Testbed
• Direct imaging of extrasolar planets: overview of ground and space programs

Cited by in corpus (18)

• Exoplanet Biosignatures: A Review of Remotely Detectable Signs of Life
• Abiotic O${}_2$ Levels on Planets around F, G, K, and M Stars: Possible False Positives for Life?
• Exoplanet Biosignatures: Observational Prospects
• Observations of Exoplanet Atmospheres
• Superhabitable Worlds
• Accretion-induced variability links young stellar objects, white dwarfs, and black holes
• Using Dimers to Measure Biosignatures and Atmospheric Pressure for Terrestrial Exoplanets
• A Review of Exoplanetary Biosignatures
• Core-collapse Supernova Explosions Driven by the Hadron-quark Phase Transition as a Rare $r$-process Site
• First on-sky demonstration of an integrated-photonic nulling-interferometer: The GLINT instrument
• Conceptual Design of the Coronagraphic High Angular Resolution Imaging Spectrograph (CHARIS) for the Subaru Telescope
• On High-Contrast Characterization of Nearby, Short-Period Exoplanets with Giant Segmented-Mirror Telescopes
• The Optical Design of CHARIS: An Exoplanet IFS for the Subaru Telescope
• Variability of Water and Oxygen Absorption Bands in the Disk-Integrated Spectra of the Earth
• Inferring Chemical Disequilibrium Biosignatures for Proterozoic Earth-Like Exoplanets
• High-Resolution Spectral Discriminants of Ocean Loss for M Dwarf Terrestrial Exoplanets
• Exoplanet Atmospheres and Giant Ground-Based Telescopes
• The influence of Jupiter, Mars and Venus on Earth's orbital evolution