On the potential of extrasolar planet transit surveys
Abstract
We analyze the respective benefits and drawbacks of ground-based and space-based transit surveys for extrasolar planets. Based on simple but realistic assumptions about the fraction of lower main sequence stars harboring telluric and giant planets within the outer limit of the habitable zone, we predict the harvests of fictitious surveys with three existing wide field optical and near-IR cameras: the CFHT-Megacam, SUBARU-Suprime and VISTA-IR. An additional promising instrument is considered, VISTA-Vis, currently under development. The results are compared with the harvests predicted under exactly the same assumptions, for the space missions COROT and KEPLER. We show that ground-based wide field surveys may discover more giant planets than space missions such as COROT or KEPLER, and that they are as efficient as COROT at detecting telluric planets. The KEPLER mission remains the more promising way of discovering telluric planets, being 50 times more efficient than any of the ground-based surveys considered here. KEPLER might even discover telluric planets in the habitable zone of their host star.Keywords
All Related Versions
This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: