HPIC: The Habitable Worlds Observatory Preliminary Input Catalog
The Habitable Worlds Observatory Preliminary Input Catalog (HPIC) is a list of ~13,000 nearby bright stars that will be potential targets for the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) in its search for Earth-sized planets around Sun-like stars.
We construct this target list using the TESS and Gaia DR3 catalogs, and develop an automated pipeline to compile stellar measurements and derived astrophysical properties for all stars. We benchmark the stellar properties in the HPIC relative to those of the manually curated ExEP HWO Precursor Science Stars list and find that, for the 164 best targets for exo-Earth direct imaging, our stellar properties are consistent.
We demonstrate the utility of the HPIC by using it as an input for yield calculations to predict the science output of various mission designs including those with larger telescope diameters and those focused on other planet types besides Earth analogs, such as Jupiter-mass planets. The breadth and completeness of the HPIC is essential for accurate HWO mission trade studies, and it will be useful for other exoplanet studies and general astrophysics studying the population of bright nearby stars.
Diagram illustrating the procedure used to construct the HPIC.
Noah Tuchow, Chris Stark, Eric Mamajek
Comments: Accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal. The HPIC is hosted on the NASA Exoplanet Archive at this https URL
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:2402.08038 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2402.08038v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Noah Tuchow
[v1] Mon, 12 Feb 2024 20:11:44 UTC (779 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.08038
Astrobiology
