Rapid characterization of exoplanet atmospheres with the Exoplanet Transmission Spectroscopy Imager (ETSI)

Abstract

The Exoplanet Transmission Spectroscopy Imager (ETSI) amalgamates a low resolution slitless prism spectrometer with custom multi-band filters to simultaneously image 15 spectral bandpasses between 430 nm and 975 nm with an average spectral resolution of $R=\lambda /\delta \lambda \sim 20$. ETSI requires only moderate telescope apertures ($\sim 2$ m) and is capable of characterizing an exoplanet atmosphere in as little as a single transit, enabling selection of the most interesting targets for further characterization with other ground and space-based observatories and is also well suited to multi-band observations of other variable and transient objects. This enables a new technique, common-path multi-band imaging (CMI), used to observe transmission spectra of exoplanets transiting bright (V$<$14 magnitude) stars. ETSI is capable of near photon-limited observations, with a systematic noise floor on par with the Hubble Space Telescope and below the Earth's atmospheric amplitude scintillation noise limit. We report the as-built instrument optical and optomechanical design, detectors, control system, telescope hardware and software interfaces, and data reduction pipeline. A summary of ETSI's science capabilities and initial results are also included.

33 pages, 17 figures, published in JATIS

References in corpus (22)

• The James Webb Space Telescope
• A Technique for Extracting Highly Precise Photometry for the Two-Wheeled Kepler Mission
• petitRADTRANS: a Python radiative transfer package for exoplanet characterization and retrieval
• Detection of atmospheric haze on an extrasolar planet: The 0.55 - 1.05 micron transmission spectrum of HD189733b with the Hubble Space Telescope
• ULTRACAM: an ultra-fast, triple-beam CCD camera for high-speed astrophysics
• SDSS Standard Star Catalog for Stripe 82: the Dawn of Industrial 1% Optical Photometry
• Spectrally resolved detection of sodium in the atmosphere of HD189733b with the HARPS spectrograph
• Retrieving scattering clouds and disequilibrium chemistry in the atmosphere of HR 8799e
• Detection of Fe I in the atmosphere of the ultra-hot Jupiter WASP-121b, and a new likelihood-based approach for Doppler-resolved spectroscopy
• HAT-P-12b: A Low-Density Sub-Saturn Mass Planet Transiting a Metal-Poor K Dwarf
• Exo-Transmit: An Open-Source Code for Calculating Transmission Spectra for Exoplanet Atmospheres of Varied Composition
• New Grids of Pure-Hydrogen White-Dwarf NLTE Model Atmospheres \newline and the HST/STIS Flux Calibration
• ACCESS & LRG-BEASTS: a precise new optical transmission spectrum of the ultrahot Jupiter WASP-103b
• Near-Infrared Emission Spectrum of WASP-103b using Hubble Space Telescope/Wide Field Camera 3
• LRG-BEASTS: sodium absorption and Rayleigh scattering in the atmosphere of WASP-94A b using NTT/EFOSC2
• High-precision multi-band time-series photometry of exoplanets Qatar-1b and TrES-5b
• LBT transmission spectroscopy of HAT-P-12b: confirmation of a cloudy atmosphere with no significant alkali features
• A New Method For Studying Exoplanet Atmospheres Using Planetary Infrared Excess
• Characterization of starspots on a young M-dwarf K2-25: multi-band observations of stellar photometric variability and planetary transits
• Monitoring the atmospheric throughput at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory with aTmCam
• Comparing transit spectroscopy pipelines at the catalogue level: evidence for systematic differences
• SIOUX project: a simultaneous multiband camera for exoplanet atmospheres studies

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Ground-Based Reconnaissance Observations of 21 Exoplanet Atmospheres with the Exoplanet Transmission Spectroscopy Imager