Seeing another Earth: Detecting and Characterizing Rocky Planets with Extremely Large Telescopes
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
2009-02-24 v1
Abstract
The detection of lower mass planets now being reported via radial velocity and microlensing surveys suggests that they may be ubiquitous. If missions such as Kepler are able to confirm this, the detection and study of rocky planets via direct imaging with ground-based telescopes of apertures > 20 m is feasible in the thermal infrared. We discuss two cases for detecting rocky planets, the first via detection of molten Earths formed though an Earth-Moon like impact event, and the second via detection of planets around very nearby stars. These observations have the potential to give us a first look at a rocky planet similar to the Earth.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0902.3852,
title = {Seeing another Earth: Detecting and Characterizing Rocky Planets with Extremely Large Telescopes},
author = {Philip M. Hinz and Scott Kenyon and Michael R. Meyer and Alan Boss and Roger Angel},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0902.3852},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
White paper submitted to the Astro2010 Decadal Survey PSF panel