Exoplanets & Exomoons

ExoVista: A Suite of Planetary System Models for Exoplanet Studies

By Keith Cowing
astro-ph.EP
January 10, 2022
Filed under
ExoVista: A Suite of Planetary System Models for Exoplanet Studies
Example V band images of 28 random planetary systems generated around stars within 50 pc by exoVista. For illustrative purposes, the stellar flux is removed and the disk is not convolved with the PSF.

Studies of future space- and ground-based exoplanet surveys often rely on models of planetary systems to simulate instrument response, estimate scientific yields, perform trade analyses, and study efficient observation strategies.

Until now, no planetary system models contained all of the basic physics necessary to enable study with all of the major exoplanet detection methods.

Here we introduce a suite of such models generated by a new tool, exoVista. The exoVista tool quickly generates thousands of models of quasi-self-consistent planetary systems around known nearby stars at scattered light wavelengths and efficiently records the position, velocity, spectrum, and physical parameters of all bodies as functions of time. The modeled planetary systems can be used to simulate surveys using the direct imaging, transit, astrometric, and radial velocity techniques, as well as the overlap of these different methods.

Christopher C. Stark

Comments: Accepted for publication in AJ 15 pages, 7 figures, 1 table
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM); Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR)
Cite as: arXiv:2201.02652 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2201.02652v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Christopher Stark
[v1] Fri, 7 Jan 2022 19:20:00 UTC (525 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.02652
Astrobiology,

Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻