SPICES: Spectro-Polarimetric Imaging and Characterization of Exoplanetary Systems
Abstract
SPICES (Spectro-Polarimetric Imaging and Characterization of Exoplanetary Systems) is a five-year M-class mission proposed to ESA Cosmic Vision. Its purpose is to image and characterize long-period extrasolar planets and circumstellar disks in the visible (450 - 900 nm) at a spectral resolution of about 40 using both spectroscopy and polarimetry. By 2020/22, present and near-term instruments will have found several tens of planets that SPICES will be able to observe and study in detail. Equipped with a 1.5 m telescope, SPICES can preferentially access exoplanets located at several AUs (0.5-10 AU) from nearby stars (25 pc) with masses ranging from a few Jupiter masses to Super Earths (2 Earth radii, 10 M) as well as circumstellar disks as faint as a few times the zodiacal light in the Solar System.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1203.0507,
title = {SPICES: Spectro-Polarimetric Imaging and Characterization of Exoplanetary Systems},
author = {Anthony Boccaletti and Jean Schneider and Wes Traub and Pierre-Olivier Lagage and Daphne Stam and Raffaele Gratton and John Trauger and Kerri Cahoy and Frans Snik and Pierre Baudoz and Raphael Galicher and Jean-Michel Reess and Dimitri Mawet and Jean-Charles Augereau and Jennifer Patience and Marc Kuchner and Mark Wyatt and Eric Pantin and Anne-Lise Maire and Christophe Verinaud and Samuel Ronayette and Didier Dubreuil and Michiel Min and Michiel Rodenhuis and Dino Mesa and Ruslan Belikov and Olivier Guyon and Motohide Tamura and Naoshi Murakami and Ingrid Mary Beerer and the SPICES team},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1203.0507},
year = {2012}
}