Habitable Zones & Global Climate

The Potential of Detecting Nearby Terrestrial Planets in the HZ with Different Methods

By Keith Cowing
Status Report
astro-ph.EP
October 24, 2023
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The Potential of Detecting Nearby Terrestrial Planets in the HZ with Different Methods
The blue, orange, and red crosses represent the averaged RV of stars due to Earth-like planets located at the IHZ, CHZ, and OHZ, respectively. The green crosses represent the maximum RV of Earth-like planets at the IHZ, with an inclination of 90◦ . The right panel shows the histogram of the RV expectation and the CDF. — astro-ph.EP

Terrestrial planets in the habitable zone around nearby stars are of great interest and provide a good sample for further characteristics of their habitability.

In this paper, we collect a nearby star catalog within 20 pc according to the Gaia Catalog of Nearby Stars, complete the physical parameters of the stars, and select stars that are not brown dwarfs or white dwarfs. After selection, a sample of 2234 main-sequence stars is used to estimate the extended HZ.

Then we inject Earth-like planets into the extended HZ around each star and calculate the signals with four methods, i.e.; velocity amplitude for radial velocity, transit probability and depth for transit, stellar displacements for astrometry, and contrast and angular separation for imaging. Considering a typical noise model based on classic instruments, we predict the highest possible detection number of Earth-like planets via different methods in the best-case hypothetical scenario.

According to this, we conclude that both astrometry and imaging have the potential to detect nearby Earth-like planets around G type stars, while radial velocity has the potential to detect 2% of nearby Earth-like planets around M stars under a precision of 0.2 m/s. Our work also provides the precision requirements for future missions to reveal the nearby Earth-like planet in the HZ.

Qiaoyang Hao, Shenwei Zhou, Huigen Liu

Comments: 22 pages, 16 figures, accepted 2023 September 7, published 2023 September 29
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:2310.15039 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2310.15039v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2310.15039
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Journal reference: published 2023 September 29 in PASP, Volume 135, Number 1051
Related DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1088/1538-3873/acf788
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Submission history
From: Qiaoyang Hao
[v1] Mon, 23 Oct 2023 15:37:00 UTC (3,671 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.15039
Astrobiology

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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