Astronomy & Telescopes

SPECULOOS: Five Years Hunting Terrestrial Planets Around Ultra-cool Dwarfs

By Keith Cowing

Status Report

astro-ph.IM

June 12, 2025

Filed under astro-ph.IM, astronomy, ELT, exoplanet, imaging, JWST, M-dwarf, SAINT-EX, SPECULOOS, ultracool dwarf

SPECULOOS: Five Years Hunting Terrestrial Planets Around Ultra-cool Dwarfs — PORTAL’s web interface. Observation view for a particular night for SPECULOOS-3 target observed by Artemis telescope at SNO. The transit of SPECULOOS-3b planet was detected thanks to PORTAL observation view by our team. The planet was later confirmed by a follow-up campaign by the SPECULOOS team. — astro-ph.IM

The SPECULOOS (Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars) project aims to detect temperate terrestrial planets transiting nearby ultracool dwarfs, including late M-dwarf stars and brown dwarfs, which are well-suited for atmospheric characterization using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and upcoming giant telescopes like the European Extremely Large Telescope (ELT).

Led by the University of Liège, SPECULOOS is conducted in partnership with the University of Cambridge, the University of Birmingham, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Bern, and ETH Zurich. The project operates a network of robotic telescopes at two main observatories: SPECULOOS-South in Chile, with four telescopes, and SPECULOOS-North in Tenerife, currently with one telescope (soon to be two).

This network is complemented by the SAINT-EX telescope located in San Pedro Mártir, Mexico. In this paper, we review the status of our facilities after five years of operations, the current challenges and development plans, and our latest scientific results.

System architectures for the 10 known planetary systems that have at least 2 giant planets detected beyond the snow line. The system architectures are shown (from top to bottom) in order of increasing stellar mass, which is indicated on the right underneath each stellar name. The size of the planets, shown in blue, are logarithmically proportional to the planet mass. — astro-ph.IM

Sebastián Zúñiga-Fernández (1), Michael Gillon (1), SPECULOOS consortium ((1) Astrobiology Research Unit, Université de Liège, Liège, Belgium)

Comments: 18 pages, SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation 2024
Subjects: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM); Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:2506.08814 [astro-ph.IM] (or arXiv:2506.08814v1 [astro-ph.IM] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2506.08814
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Related DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1117/12.3020550
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Submission history
From: Sebastián Zúñiga-Fernández
[v1] Tue, 10 Jun 2025 14:05:26 UTC (3,987 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08814

Astrobiology, astronomy,

Keith Cowing

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) 🖖🏻

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