Target Prioritization and Observing Strategies for the NEID Earth Twin Survey

Abstract

NEID is a high-resolution optical spectrograph on the WIYN 3.5-m telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory and will soon join the new generation of extreme precision radial velocity instruments in operation around the world. We plan to use the instrument to conduct the NEID Earth Twin Survey (NETS) over the course of the next 5 years, collecting hundreds of observations of some of the nearest and brightest stars in an effort to probe the regime of Earth-mass exoplanets. Even if we take advantage of the extreme instrumental precision conferred by NEID, it will remain difficult to disentangle the weak (~10 cm s${}^{-1}$) signals induced by such low-mass, long-period exoplanets from stellar noise for all but the quietest host stars. In this work, we present a set of quantitative selection metrics which we use to identify an initial NETS target list consisting of stars conducive to the detection of exoplanets in the regime of interest. We also outline a set of observing strategies with which we aim to mitigate uncertainty contributions from intrinsic stellar variability and other sources of noise.

19 pages, 10 figures, 1 table

References in corpus (23)

• Array Programming with NumPy
• The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite
• How to Constrain Your M Dwarf: measuring effective temperature, bolometric luminosity, mass, and radius
• The Occurrence and Mass Distribution of Close-in Super-Earths, Neptunes, and Jupiters
• Planets and Stellar Activity: Hide and Seek in the CoRoT-7 system
• High-precision wavelength calibration of astronomical spectrographs with laser frequency combs
• Stellar Activity Masquerading as Planets in the Habitable Zone of the M dwarf Gliese 581
• Revisiting Proxima with ESPRESSO
• Stellar activity mimics a habitable-zone planet around Kapteyn's star
• Measuring precise radial velocities on individual spectral lines : II. Dependance of stellar activity signal on line depth
• Filtering solar-like oscillations for exoplanet detection in radial velocity observations
• A comprehensive radial velocity error budget for next generation Doppler spectrometers
• HARPS-N Solar Radial-Velocity Variations Are Dominated By Large, Bright Magnetic Regions
• Variability of stellar granulation and convective blueshift with spectral type and magnetic activity. I. K and G main sequence stars
• Insights on the Spectral Signatures of Stellar Activity and Planets from PCA
• Astrophysical Insights into Radial Velocity Jitter from an Analysis of 600 Planet-search Stars
• The Changing Face of $\alpha$ Centauri B: Probing plage and stellar activity in K-dwarfs
• Impact of micro-telluric lines on precise radial velocities and its correction
• Unexpectedly strong effect of supergranulation on the detectability of Earth twins orbiting Sun-like stars with radial velocities
• The correlation between photometric variability and radial velocity jitter, based on TESS and HARPS observations
• Empirical Corrections for Charge Transfer Inefficiency and Associated Centroid Shifts for STIS CCD Observations
• Activity time series of old stars from late F to early K. IV. Limits of the correction of radial velocities using chromospheric emission
• The Effects of Telluric Contamination in Iodine Calibrated Precise Radial Velocities

Cited by in corpus (18)

• YARARA V2: Reaching sub m/s precision over a decade using PCA on line-by-line RVs
• Stellar activity correction using PCA decomposition of shells
• The Demographics of Terrestrial Planets in the Venus Zone
• Searching for Giant Exoplanets around M-dwarf Stars (GEMS) I: Survey Motivation
• Impact of Correlated Noise on the Mass Precision of Earth-analog Planets in Radial Velocity Surveys
• Gaussian processes for radial velocity modeling Better rotation periods and planetary parameters with the quasi-periodic kernel and constrained priors
• Magnitude-squared coherence: A powerful tool for disentangling Doppler planet discoveries from stellar activity
• $\text{GRASS}$: Distinguishing Planet-induced Doppler Signatures from Granulation with a Synthetic Spectra Generator
• Fishing for Planets: A Comparative Analysis of EPRV Survey Performance in the Presence of Correlated Noise
• The death of Vulcan: NEID reveals the planet candidate orbiting HD 26965 is stellar activity
• Detection of p-mode Oscillations in HD 35833 with NEID and TESS
• GRASS II: Simulations of Potential Granulation Noise Mitigation Methods
• The NEID Earth Twin Survey. II. Dynamical Masses in Seven High-acceleration Star Systems
• Quiet Please: Detrending Radial Velocity Variations from Stellar Activity with a Physically Motivated Spot Model
• Using Doppler Imaging to model stellar activity and search for planets around Sun-like stars
• Searching for Low-Mass Exoplanets Amid Stellar Variability with a Fixed Effects Linear Model of Line-by-Line Shape Changes
• The Effects of Sunspots on Spectral Line Shapes in the Visible
• SPORES-HWO. II. Companion Mass Limits and Updated Planet Properties for 120 Future Exoplanet Imaging Targets from 35 yr of Precise Doppler Monitoring