The Demographics of Terrestrial Planets in the Venus Zone
arXiv:2302.03055 · doi:10.3847/1538-3881/acbfaf
Abstract
Understanding the physical characteristics of Venus, including its atmosphere, interior, and its evolutionary pathway with respect to Earth, remains a vital component for terrestrial planet evolution models and the emergence and/or decline of planetary habitability. A statistical strategy for evaluating the evolutionary pathways of terrestrial planets lies in the atmospheric characterization of exoplanets, where the sample size provides sufficient means for determining required runaway greenhouse conditions. Observations of potential exoVenuses can help confirm hypotheses about Venus' past, as well as the occurrence rate of Venus-like planets in other systems. Additionally, the data from future Venus missions, such as DAVINCI, EnVision, and VERITAS, will provide valuable information regarding Venus, and the study of exoVenuses will be complimentary to these missions. To facilitate studies of exoVenus candidates, we provide a catalog of all confirmed terrestrial planets in the Venus Zone, including transiting and non-transiting cases, and quantify their potential for follow-up observations. We examine the demographics of the exoVenus population with relation to stellar and planetary properties, such as the planetary radius gap. We highlight specific high-priority exoVenus targets for follow-up observations including: TOI-2285 b, LTT 1445 A c, TOI-1266 c, LHS 1140 c, and L98-59 d. We also discuss follow-up observations that may yield further insight into the Venus/Earth divergence in atmospheric properties.
27 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal
References in corpus (29)
- Array Programming with NumPy
- The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite
- Gaia Data Release 1. Summary of the astrometric, photometric, and survey properties
- A terrestrial planet candidate in a temperate orbit around Proxima Centauri
- Most 1.6 Earth-Radius Planets are not Rocky
- Habitable Zones Around Main-Sequence Stars: Dependence on Planetary Mass
- Extreme Water Loss and Abiotic O Buildup On Planets Throughout the Habitable Zones of M Dwarfs
- Was Venus the First Habitable World of our Solar System?
- Observing the Atmospheres of Known Temperate Earth-sized Planets with JWST
- The Detectability and Characterization of the TRAPPIST-1 Exoplanet Atmospheres with JWST
- Predictions of the atmospheric composition of GJ 1132b
- A Catalog of Kepler Habitable Zone Exoplanet Candidates
- Day-night cloud asymmetry prevents early oceans on Venus but not on Earth
- Warm terrestrial planet with half the mass of Venus transiting a nearby star
- On the Frequency of Potential Venus Analogs from Kepler Data
- A super-Earth and a sub-Neptune orbiting the bright, quiet M3 dwarf TOI-1266
- A Versatile Technique to Enable sub-milli-Kelvin Instrument Stability for Precise Radial Velocity Measurements: Tests with the Habitable-zone Planet Finder
- The Exoplanet Orbital Eccentricity - Multiplicity Relation and the Solar System
- Architectures of Planetary Systems and Implications for their Formation
- Solar System Physics for Exoplanet Research
- Habitability of Earth-like stagnant lid planets: Climate evolution and recovery from snowball states
- O2- and CO-Rich Atmospheres for Potentially Habitable Environments on TRAPPIST-1 Planets
- Observing Isotopologue Bands in Terrestrial Exoplanet Atmospheres with the James Webb Space Telescope---Implications for Identifying Past Atmospheric and Ocean Loss
- Probabilistic Constraints on the Mass and Composition of Proxima b
- Target Prioritization and Observing Strategies for the NEID Earth Twin Survey
- Finding the Needles in the Haystacks: High-Fidelity Models of the Modern and Archean Solar System for Simulating Exoplanet Observations
- TESS Habitable Zone Star Catalog
- On the Orbital Inclination of Proxima Centauri b
- MIRECLE: Science Yield for a Mid-IR Explorer-Class Mission to Study Non-Transiting Rocky Planets Orbiting the Nearest M-Stars Using Planetary Infrared Excess
Cited by in corpus (4)
- Role of Planetary Radius on Atmospheric Escape of Rocky Exoplanets
- Tracing the Inner Edge of the Habitable Zone with Sulfur Chemistry
- The TESS-Keck Survey. XIX. A Warm Transiting Sub-Saturn Mass Planet and a non-Transiting Saturn Mass Planet Orbiting a Solar Analog
- Retention of surface water on tidally locked rocky planets in the Venus zone around M dwarfs