English

GEO and LEO: The Final Frontier for Plutonic FFP Parallax

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics 2024-08-01 v1 Astrophysics of Galaxies Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics

Abstract

I show that microlens parallaxes, πE\pi_{\rm E}, can be derived for free-floating planets (FFPs) with masses down to that of Pluto, by combining observations from a satellite in geosynchronous (GEO) orbit with another observatory that is on or near Earth's surface, i.e., either ground-based or in low Earth orbit (LEO). Because these low-mass FFPs typically have measurements of the angular Einstein radius, θE\theta_{\rm E}, from finite-source effects, such πE\pi_{\rm E} measurements directly yield the FFP mass M=θE/κπEM=\theta_{\rm E}/\kappa \pi_{\rm E} where κ\kappa is a physical constant. Such Earth-GEO measurements almost perfectly complement Earth-L2 measurements, which extend to higher FFP mass and greater FFP distance. LEO-only observations can yield mass measurement at even smaller FFP mass and nearer FFP distances. I discuss methods for breaking the Refsdal (1966) two-fold degeneracy in πE,±\pi_{{\rm E},\pm}.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2407.21696,
  title  = {GEO and LEO: The Final Frontier for Plutonic FFP Parallax},
  author = {Andrew Gould},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.21696},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

15 pages, 3 figures