SPECULOOS -- Ultracool Dwarf Transit Survey: Target List and Strategy

Abstract

One of the most promising avenues for the detailed study of temperate Earth-sized exoplanets is the detection of such planets in transit in front of stars small and nearby enough to make possible their thorough atmospheric characterisation with next generation telescopes like the James Webb Space telescope (JWST) or Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). In this context, the TRAPPIST-1 planets form an unique benchmark system that has gathered the interest of a large scientific community. The SPECULOOS survey is an exoplanet transit survey, that targets a volume-limited (40 pc) sample of ultracool dwarf stars. We define the SPECULOOS target list as the sum of three non-overlapping sub-programs incorporating the latest type objects (T_eff < 3000K): Program1: 365 dwarfs that are small and nearby enough to make possible the detailed atmospheric characterisation of an `Earth-like' planet with the upcoming JWST, Program2: 171 dwarfs of M5-type and later for which a significant detection of a planet similar to TRAPPIST-1b should be within reach of the exoplanet transit survey TESS, and Program3: 1121 dwarfs later than M6-type that aims to perform a statistical census of short-period planets around ultracool dwarf stars. Our compound target list includes 1657 photometrically classified late-type dwarfs. 260 of these targets are classified for the first time as possible nearby ultracool dwarf stars. Our general observational strategy is to monitor each target for 100 to 200hr with our telescope network, by efficiently using the synergy with TESS for our Program2 and a fraction of the targets of Program1. We expect to detect up to a few dozens temperate, rocky planets, a handful of them being amenable for atmospheric characterisation with JWST and other future giant telescopes which will improve drastically our understanding of the planetary population of the latest-type stars.

Accepted for publication in A&A, 13pages, 10 figures

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Cited by in corpus (25)

• Two temperate super-Earths transiting a nearby late-type M dwarf
• Rotation Periods, Inclinations, and Obliquities of Cool Stars Hosting Directly Imaged Substellar Companions: Spin-Orbit Misalignments are Common
• Empirically Determining Substellar Cloud Compositions in the era of JWST
• A super-Earth and a mini-Neptune near the 2:1 MMR straddling the radius valley around the nearby mid-M dwarf TOI-2096
• SPECULOOS Northern Observatory: searching for red worlds in the northern skies
• The CARMENES search for exoplanets around M dwarfs, Wolf 1069 b: Earth-mass planet in the habitable zone of a nearby, very low-mass star
• A 1.55 R${}_{\oplus }$ habitable-zone planet hosted by TOI-715, an M4 star near the ecliptic South Pole
• A Study of Flares in the Ultra-Cool Regime from SPECULOOS-South
• An M dwarf accompanied by a close-in giant orbiter with SPECULOOS
• Serendipitous discovery of radio flaring behaviour from a nearby M dwarf with MeerKAT
• TESS discovery of a sub-Neptune orbiting a mid-M dwarf TOI-2136
• Predicting the Yield of Small Transiting Exoplanets around Mid-M and Ultra-Cool Dwarfs in the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Galactic Bulge Time Domain Survey
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• Narrow loophole for H2-dominated atmospheres on habitable rocky planets around M dwarfs
• Radio Variable and Transient Sources on Minute Timescales in the ASKAP Pilot Surveys
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• Fundamental effective temperature measurements for eclipsing binary stars -- III. SPIRou near-infrared spectroscopy and CHEOPS photometry of the benchmark G0V star EBLM J0113+31
• Detailed stellar activity analysis and modelling of GJ 832: Reassessment of the putative habitable zone planet GJ 832c
• TIC-320687387 B: a long-period eclipsing M-dwarf close to the hydrogen burning limit
• The Perkins INfrared Exosatellite Survey (PINES) II. Transit Candidates and Implications for Planet Occurrence around L and T Dwarfs
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