From kdh1@st-andrews.ac.uk Tue Mar 4 14:33:44 2003 Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2003 14:30:58 +0000 (GMT) From: Keith D Horne To: "Wark, DL (David) " Cc: 'Simon Morris ' , 'Mike Edmunds ' , 'astronomy & cosmology advisory panel ' , "'BerryS@pparc.ac.uk '" , 'COLIN VINCENT ' , "'j.c.b.papaloizou@qmw.ac.uk '" , "'mgh@ast.leeds.ac.uk '" , "'msc@mssl.ucl.ac.uk '" , "'peter.coles@nottingham.ac.uk '" , "'pvdwerf@strw.leidenuniv.nl '" , "'tjp@star.sr.bham.ac.uk '" , 'Mark Cropper ' Subject: SR2004: Robotic EXoplanet discovery network Discussion of this proposal (REX) is underway in the UK exoplanet community. So far there seems to be fairly strong support. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 21:38:57 +0000 (GMT) From: Keith D Horne To: Don Pollacco , Phil Charles , Mike Bode , Alan Fitzsimmons , Alan Penny , Hugh Jones , Iain Steele , Dave Carter , Tim Naylor , Mike Barlow , Bill Dent , Simon Hodgkin , Andrew Cameron , Carole Haswell , Simon Green , Andy Norton , Barrie William Jones , John Papaloizou , Gerry Gilmore , Pete Wheatley , Richard West Subject: SR 2004 - Robotic EXoplanet discovery network. Hi, Alan Rodger phoned me today to ask advice. He indicates that the Solar System Advisory Panel would like to include an exo-planet item in their recommendations for SR2004, but that it is not realistic to request funding for all the items that have been requested. He would like ideally for the UK exo-planet community to unite behind a single highest-priority item for SR2004. He has to report by end of this week. This timetable is of course impossible. I intend to reply to Alan Rodger by Wed 5 Mar, but before then I want to state my current proposed recommendation, and initiate what must be a brief e-mail discussion to see if there is a general consensus or a wide range of opinions about what would be the best way for the UK exoplanet community to benefit from possible SR 2004 funding. Please feel free to send me your views, and to forward this e-mail to anyone in the UK who you think may by interested. Bear in mind that the timescale is impossibly short. In SR2002, four exo-planet SoIs were considered by the SSAP and the AAP. Eddington Exo-Planet Science Data Centre (PI: A.Penny - funded) 1.5m Wide-Angle Search for Planets (PI: K.Horne - unfunded) 1.7m RoboNet's Microlensing Search for Cool Earths (PI: K.Horne - unfunded) 4.2m (or 8.2m) Robotic Planet Search Telescope (PI: H.Jones - unfunded) 7.8m For SR2004, we have a real opportunity to put the UK on the map in terms of dedicated facilities for exoplanet discovery. I am aware of 2 exoplanet concept papers submitted last week to SSAP: =============================================================== GRASP: GRound-based All-sky Survey for Planets (PI: A.Fitzsimmons) All-sky ground transit survey to find 2000 hot Jupiters transiting the brightest stars down to 13 mag. 10m 6 24-CCD 60x60 degree SuperWASP cameras 2m 2 1m follow-up scopes (north and south) 5m 5 years running costs 1m contingency ------------------------------ 18m total =============================================================== Life on Other Earths (PI: A.Penny) 20m total (division to be decided later) - UK contribution to technology precursors to ESA's Darwin via ESA's Smart-3 (formation flying) and (possibly) NASA's FKSI (space infrared interferrometry) missions. - Robotic search facilities to detect planetary systems and other Earths, and other observational and theoretical work on planetary systems - A new biological and environmental programme of computer modelling studies of the roles and feedbacks of biota with the Earth's atmosphere and of laboratory studies to examine biogeochemical cycles in primitive photosynthetic organisms. The aim is to understand how changes in climate and microbial processes may influence the atmospheres of extrasolar Earth-like planets. ----------------------------------------------------------------- What I propose to put forward is basically an elaboration of the middle item of Alan Penny's proposal above. His third item would presumably be funded by NERC rather than PPARC, and this adds an important cross-council dimension. His first item - technology precursors to Darwin - are certainly important but in my opinion would not give the UK as much scientific impact as the robotic exoplanet search programme. If both cannot be funded, my choice would be for the robotic search facilities. What I currently think I would like to recommend to Alan Rodger is a Robotic Exo-planet Discovery Network. We might call this REX, although it is really the southern half of RoboNet, but with a reduced instrument suite to target exoplanet discovery programmes. REX would be 3 southern 2m RoboNet telescopes, each equipped with - CCD camera for microlens planet searches (primarily during the Bulge season Jun-Aug) and deep transit surveys - hi-res spectrograph for radial-velocity work including conventional doppler-wobble studies of southern-sky targets and follow-up confirmation of transit candidates emerging from our SuperWASP network and from Eddington. REX will give the UK a distinctive world-leading capability for exo-planet discovery in the next decade, enabling the UK to discover and characterize a wide variety of exo-planets, hot and cold, large and small, to establish a broad context in which to understand the significance of our solar system in comparison with the planetary systems of other stars, to determine in particular whether Earth-like planets are common or rare, and thereby to pave the way for the Darwin/TPF mission's search for the signatures of life in the atmospheres of nearby habitable worlds. By combining searches for both hot planets (transits) and cool planets (doppler,microlensing), we will bracket the liquid water zone to obtain a secure measurement of the abundance of habitable Earth-like planets. Here is a rough budget and spend schedule: year1 year2 year3 year4 years 5-8 05/06 06/07 07/08 08/09 09/10-10/13 total ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Telescope 1 1.00 1.00 0.65 2.65 Site+Shipping 0.25 0.25 0.50 Enclosure 0.25 0.50 0.25 1.00 Spectrograph 0.50 0.50 1.00 CCD Camera 0.50 0.50 1.00 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Telescope 2 1.00 1.00 0.65 2.65 Site+Shipping 0.50 0.50 Enclosure 0.50 0.50 1.00 Spectrograph 0.50 0.50 1.00 CCD Camera 0.50 0.50 1.00 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Telescope 3 1.00 1.00 0.65 2.65 Site+Shipping 0.25 0.25 0.50 Enclosure 0.25 0.50 0.25 1.00 Spectrograph 0.50 0.50 1.00 CCD Camera 0.50 0.50 1.00 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Project Mgmt 0.10 0.10 0.10 0.10 0.40 Operating costs 0.35 0.75 0.75x4 4.10 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Total: 4.60 8.35 5.25 1.75 3.0 22.95 Plus contingency (10%) ====================================================================== Options for trimming the above budget include cut costs on the CCD camera (smaller field of view), cut number of spectrographs from 3 to 1 (loss of radial velocity work) cut aperture or number of telescopes (loss of planet discovery rate). But the budget above is about the right size and would give the UK a clearly distinctive and world-leading exo-planet discovery capability rather than one that might be world-leading depending on what other nations do in the same area. Clearly there is a lot of science outside the exo-planet area that would be enabled by expanding the instrumentation suite and/or adding additional telescopes. An example would be low-res fibre-IFU spectrograph to enable sub-minute spectroscopic follow-up of gamma-ray bursts and other transient events. For these other time-domain astrophysics experiments, we can lobby the Astronomy Advisory Panel, and look for smaller pots of cash for instruments (e.g. SRDG,SRIF,grants). Some rationale for the above proposal: Why not GRASP: The SR2004 funding will begin around 2005/6. By then my guess is ground-based hot Jupiter surveys will be well underway. The UK will be taking a leading role based on our current SRIF funding for two SuperWASP cameras (La Palma from 2003, SAAO? from 2004?) plus others that may be funded between now and then. We still need compute/archive infrastructure for these, but I think we should get this from the e-science budget rather than pitching for new money in SR2004. Considering that several groups outwith the UK are pursuing ground-based wide-angle transit searches as well, I think the science targeted by the GRASP proposal may already be nearly in hand by 2006. Why robotic photometry: The robotic 2m telescopes at 3 complementary longitudes in the southern hemisphere will enable a world-leading microlens planet search to detect cool planets orbiting the lens stars with masses ranging from Jupiters to Earths. Using most of the telescope time during the Bulge season (Jun,Jul,Aug) for 3-5 years will intensively monitor 1000 micro-lens candidates and discover 20% of the Jupiters (1-day anomalies) and 2% of the Earths (1-hr anomalies) orbiting the lens stars in the 1-4 AU lensing zone. The cool-planet catalog from microlensing probes outside the habitable zone, complementing the hot planet catalog from the space transit missions. This brackets the liquid-water zone, we secure our knowledge of the abundance of ``habitable'' earths. Why robotic hi-res spectroscopy: In addition to the UK's SuperWASP network, Eddington and Kepler should launch in 2007/08. These missions doing transit searches from space should find thousands of hot jupiters and hundreds of hot earths in the first few months after launch, delivering progressively cooler longer-period planets reaching out to the habitable zones by circa 2011. Ground-based spectroscopic follow-up of transit candidates revealed by these missions will be a priority in this era. The focus of Doppler studies in the next decade is longer periods and more multi-planet systems. Work on northern targets will likely be dominated by the established group lead by Marcy. UK will have access to HARPS on VLT for southern targets, but Geneva group will likely lead this. Dedicated robotic spectroscopy with three 2m telescopes would give the UK a distinctive strategy that could well compete with partial allocations of VLT/HARPS time. The incremental cost (approx 3m for 3 spectrographs) makes this a very attractive addition once the telescopes are funded. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Keith Horne off: +44-1334-463322 Physics/Astronomy sec: +44-1334-463103 Univ. of St.Andrews fax: +44-1334-463104 St.Andrews KY16 9SS e-mail: kdh1@st-and.ac.uk Scotland, UK http://star-www.st-and.ac.uk/~kdh1 -------------------------------------------------------------------