The bulk composition of exo-planets
Abstract
Priorities in exo-planet research are rapidly moving from finding planets to characterizing their physical properties. Of key importance is their chemical composition, which feeds back into our understanding of planet formation. For the foreseeable future, far-ultraviolet spectroscopy of white dwarfs accreting planetary debris remains the only way to directly and accurately measure the bulk abundances of exo-planetary bodies. The exploitation of this method is limited by the sensitivity of HST, and significant progress will require a large-aperture space telescope with a high-throughput ultraviolet spectrograph.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1505.03142,
title = {The bulk composition of exo-planets},
author = {Boris Gaensicke and John Debes and Patrick Dufour and Jay Farihi and Michael Jura and Mukremin Kilic and Carl Melis and Dimitri Veras and Siyi Xu and Ben Zuckerman},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1505.03142},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
Submitted in response to NASA call for white papers: "Large Astrophysics Missions to Be Studied by NASA Prior to the 2020 Decadal Survey"