Up to date over 4,000 known exoplanets have been detected. Spectroscopy during planet transits in front of host stars is starting to shed light on the diversity of atmospheres and planets. Earth-like rocky planets are intriguing to search for biosignatures such as H2O, CH4, O3 and O2. Detecting and resolving these very narrow absorption lines from low-pressure atmospheric layers requires extreme spectroscopic resolution, also to distinguish telluric and exoplanet signals. Recent studies indicate upcoming Extremely Large Telescopes combined with spectral resolutions of R~400,000 are ideal to detect O2 in earth analogs from ground. To boost typical high-resolution spectrographs (R~100,000) to that level, novel Fabry Perot Interferometer-based concepts have been developed. Prototypes achieve a spectral resolution of approximately 500,000 with high throughput. I will present first on-sky results from our prototype and discuss the future of this technology for exoplanet characterization from ground and space.
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Ultra-high resolution spectroscopy from ground and space for exoplanet atmosphere characterization
Published:
04 July 2021
by MDPI
in Innovation Aviation & Aerospace Industry - International Conference 2021
session Astronomical Technology
https://doi.org/10.3390/IAAI-2021-10600
(registering DOI)
Abstract:
Keywords: Exoplanet atmospheres; Biosignatures; Ultra-high resolution spectroscopy; Fabry Perot Interferometry; Extremely Large Telescopes; cubesat