Observing exoplanets in the near-infrared from a high altitude balloon platform

Abstract

Although there exists a large sample of known exoplanets, little spectroscopic data exists that can be used to study their global atmospheric properties. This deficiency can be addressed by performing phase-resolved spectroscopy -- continuous spectroscopic observations of a planet's entire orbit about its host star -- of transiting exoplanets. Planets with characteristics suitable for atmospheric characterization have orbits of several days, thus phase curve observations are highly resource intensive, especially for shared use facilities. In this work, we show that an infrared spectrograph operating from a high altitude balloon platform can perform phase-resolved spectroscopy of hot Jupiter-type exoplanets with performance comparable to a space-based telescope. Using the EXoplanet Climate Infrared TElescope (EXCITE) experiment as an example, we quantify the impact of the most important systematic effects that we expect to encounter from a balloon platform. We show an instrument like EXCITE will have the stability and sensitivity to significantly advance our understanding of exoplanet atmospheres. Such an instrument will both complement and serve as a critical bridge between current and future space-based near infrared spectroscopic instruments.

arXiv comment18 pages, 9 figures. Accepted for publication by the Journal of Astronomical Instrumentation

References in corpus (48)

• The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite
• Analytic Lightcurves for Planetary Transit Searches
• The WASP Project and the SuperWASP Cameras
• batman: BAsic Transit Model cAlculatioN in Python
• Atmospheric Circulation and Tides of "51Peg b-like" Planets
• First Light for GRAVITY: Phase Referencing Optical Interferometry for the Very Large Telescope Interferometer
• The effect of red noise on planetary transit detection
• Homogeneous studies of transiting extrasolar planets. IV. Thirty systems with space-based light curves
• The Statistics of Albedo and Heat Recirculation on Hot Exoplanets
• The Flat Transmission Spectrum of the Super-Earth GJ1214b from Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope
• Thermal structure of an exoplanet atmosphere from phase-resolved emission spectroscopy
• From thermal dissociation to condensation in the atmospheres of ultra hot Jupiters: WASP-121b in context
• 3.6 and 4.5 Micron Phase Curves and Evidence for Non-Equilibrium Chemistry in the Atmosphere of Extrasolar Planet HD 189733b
• H- Opacity and Water Dissociation in the Dayside Atmosphere of the Very Hot Gas Giant WASP-18 b
• Spitzer Secondary Eclipses of the Dense, Modestly-irradiated, Giant Exoplanet HAT-P-20b Using Pixel-Level Decorrelation
• Tau-REx I: A next generation retrieval code for exoplanetary atmospheres
• Extremely Irradiated Hot Jupiters: Non-Oxide Inversions, H- Opacity, and Thermal Dissociation of Molecules
• The Exoplanet Orbit Database II: Updates to exoplanets.org
• Atmospheric circulation of tidally locked exoplanets: a suite of benchmark tests for dynamical solvers
• Global Climate and Atmospheric Composition of the Ultra-Hot Jupiter WASP-103b from HST and Spitzer Phase Curve Observations
• Dynamic Meteorology at the Photosphere of HD 209458b
• Doppler Signatures of the Atmospheric Circulation on Hot Jupiters
• Observing transiting planets with JWST -- Prime targets and their synthetic spectral observations
• Three Dimensional Modeling of Hot Jupiter Atmospheric Flows
• Atmospheric Circulation of Hot Jupiters: A Shallow Three-Dimensional Model
• Increased Heat Transport in Ultra-Hot Jupiter Atmospheres Through H${}_2$ Dissociation/Recombination
• Tau-REx II: Retrieval of emission spectra
• Atmospheric Circulation of Eccentric Hot Neptune GJ436b
• Pseudo 2D chemical model of hot Jupiter atmospheres: application to HD 209458b and HD 189733b
• First direct detection of an exoplanet by optical interferometry; Astrometry and K-band spectroscopy of HR8799 e
• The Effects of Irradiation on Hot Jovian Atmospheres: Heat Redistribution and Energy Dissipation
• A Model for Thermal Phase Variations of Circular and Eccentric Exoplanets
• The Peculiar Atmospheric Chemistry of KELT-9b
• A new approach to analysing HST spatial scans: the transmission spectrum of HD 209458 b
• Radiative Hydrodynamic Simulations of HD209458b: Temporal Variability
• Spectra as Windows into Exoplanet Atmospheres
• Three-dimensional atmospheric circulation of hot Jupiters on highly eccentric orbits
• SPIDER: Probing the Early Universe with a Suborbital Polarimeter
• Sub-Pixel Response Measurement of Near-Infrared Sensors
• Atmospheric Circulation of Eccentric Hot Jupiter HAT-P-2b
• Observational Consequences of Hydrodynamic Flows on Hot Jupiters
• Exoplanet Characterization by Multi-Observatory Transit Photometry with TESS and CHEOPS
• The Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (BLAST) 2006: Calibration and Flight Performance
• Precision Near Infrared Photometry For Exoplanet Transit Observations - I : Ensemble Spot Photometry for An All-Sky Survey
• Validation of Up-the-Ramp Sampling with Cosmic Ray Rejection on IR Detectors
• Spitzer Secondary Eclipse Depths with Multiple Intrapixel Sensitivity Correction Methods: Observations of WASP-13b, WASP-15b, WASP-16b, WASP-62b, and HAT-P-22b
• Stellar pulsation and granulation as noise sources in exoplanet transit spectroscopy in the ARIEL space mission
• EChOSim: The Exoplanet Characterisation Observatory software simulator

Cited by in corpus (5)

• The cloudy shape of hot Jupiter thermal phase curves
• Simulating gas giant exoplanet atmospheres with Exo-FMS: Comparing semi-grey, picket fence and correlated-k radiative-transfer schemes
• ExoSim: the Exoplanet Observation Simulator
• Terminus: A Versatile Simulator for Space-based Telescopes
• Examining NHD vs QHD in the GCM THOR with non-grey radiative transfer for the hot Jupiter regime