Europlanet Science Congress 2020
Virtual meeting
21 September – 9 October 2020
Europlanet Science Congress 2020
Virtual meeting
21 September – 9 October 2020
EPSC Abstracts
Vol. 14, EPSC2020-40, 2020, updated on 15 May 2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2020-40
Europlanet Science Congress 2020
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Atmospheric Characterization via Broadband Color Filters on the PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (PLATO) Mission

John Lee Grenfell1, Mareike Godolt2, Juan Cabrera1, Ludmila Carone3, Antonio Garcia Munoz2, Daniel Kitzmann4, Alexis M. S. Smith1, and Heike Rauer1,2,5
John Lee Grenfell et al.
  • 1Department of Extrasolar Planets and Atmospheres (EPA), Institute for Planetary Research, German Aerospace Centre (DLR), Berlin, Germany (lee.grenfell@dlr.de)
  • 2Centre for Astronomy und Astrophysics (ZAA), Berlin Institute of Technology (TUB), Berlin, Germany
  • 3Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), Heidelberg, Germany
  • 4Center for Space and Habitability (CSH), University of Bern, Switzerland
  • 5Institute for Geological Sciences, Free University of Berlin (FUB), Berlin, Germany

We assess broadband color filters for the two fast cameras on the PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations (PLATO) of stars space mission with respect to exoplanetary atmospheric characterization. We focus on Ultra Hot Jupiters and Hot Jupiters placed 25pc and 100pc away from the Earth and warm Super-Earths placed 10pc and 25pc away. Our analysis takes as input literature values for the difference in transit depth between the broadband lower (500-675nm) wavelength interval (hereafter referred to as ”blue“) and the upper (675-1125nm) broadband wavelength interval (hereafter referred to as ”red“) for transmission, occultation and phase curve analyses. Planets orbiting main sequence central stars with stellar classes F, G, K and M are investigated. We calculate the signal-to-noise ratio with respect to photon and instrument noise for detecting the difference in transit depth between the two spectral intervals. Results suggest that bulk atmospheric composition and planetary geometric albedos could be detected for (Ultra) Hot Jupiters up to ~100pc (~25pc) with strong (moderate) Rayleigh extinction. Phase curve information could be extracted for Ultra Hot Jupiters orbiting K and G dwarf stars up to 25pc away. For warm Super-Earths, basic atmospheric types (primary and water-dominated) and the presence of sub-micron hazes in the upper atmosphere could be distinguished for up to a handful of cases up to ~10pc (manuscript accepted in Experimental Astronomy).

How to cite: Grenfell, J. L., Godolt, M., Cabrera, J., Carone, L., Garcia Munoz, A., Kitzmann, D., Smith, A. M. S., and Rauer, H.: Atmospheric Characterization via Broadband Color Filters on the PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (PLATO) Mission, Europlanet Science Congress 2020, online, 21 Sep–9 Oct 2020, EPSC2020-40, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2020-40, 2020.