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 $\sim$1200 ultracool (spectral type M7 and later) dwarfs bright enough in the infrared ($K$-mag $\le 12.5$) to possibly enable the atmospheric characterization of temperate terrestrial planets with next-generation facilities like the $\text{James Webb Space Telescope}$. 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.

arXiv comment21 pages, 13 figures, 1 table. Proceedings of SPIE

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Cited by in corpus (15)

• The scatter of the M dwarf mass-radius relationship
• The Near-Infrared Transmission Spectra of TRAPPIST-1 Planets b, c, d, e, f, and g and Stellar Contamination in Multi-Epoch Transit Spectra
• Occurrence Rates of Planets Orbiting M Stars: Applying ABC to Kepler DR25, Gaia DR2, and 2MASS Data
• NGTS-4b: A sub-Neptune Transiting in the Desert
• Photometry and Performance of SPECULOOS-South
• An Eclipsing Substellar Binary in a Young Triple System discovered by SPECULOOS
• A roadmap for the atmospheric characterization of terrestrial exoplanets with JWST
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