2015barstow_echo.pdf (2.74 MB)
Exoplanet atmospheres with EChO: spectral retrievals using EChOSim
journal contribution
posted on 2016-03-02, 11:42 authored by J. K. Barstow, N. E. Bowles, S. Aigrain, Leigh Nicholas Fletcher, P. G. J. Irwin, R. Varley, E. PascaleWe demonstrate the effectiveness of the Exoplanet Characterisation Observatory mission concept for constraining the atmospheric properties of hot and warm gas giants and super Earths. Synthetic primary and secondary transit spectra for a range of planets are passed through EChOSim [13] to obtain the expected level of noise for different observational scenarios; these are then used as inputs for the NEMESIS atmospheric retrieval code and the retrieved atmospheric properties (temperature structure, composition and cloud properties) compared with the known input values, following the method of [1]. To correctly retrieve the temperature structure and composition of the atmosphere to within 2 σ, we find that we require: a single transit or eclipse of a hot Jupiter orbiting a sun-like (G2) star at 35 pc to constrain the terminator and dayside atmospheres; 20 transits or eclipses of a warm Jupiter orbiting a similar star; 10 transits/eclipses of a hot Neptune orbiting an M dwarf at 6 pc; and 30 transits or eclipses of a GJ1214b-like planet.
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Citation
Experimental Astronomy, 2015, 40 (2), pp. 545-561Author affiliation
/Organisation/COLLEGE OF SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING/Department of Physics and AstronomyVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Published in
Experimental AstronomyPublisher
Springer Verlag (Germany)issn
0922-6435eissn
1572-9508Acceptance date
2014-05-23Copyright date
2014Available date
2016-03-02Publisher DOI
Publisher version
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10686-014-9397-yLanguage
enAdministrator link
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