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The science of EChO
- Giovanna Tinetti, James Y-K. Cho, Caitlin A. Griffith, Olivier Grasset, Lee Grenfell, Tristan Guillot, Tommi T. Koskinen, Julianne I. Moses, David Pinfield, Jonathan Tennyson, Marcell Tessenyi, Robin Wordsworth, Alan Aylward, Roy van Boekel, Angioletta Coradini, Therese Encrenaz, Ignas Snellen, Maria R. Zapatero-Osorio, Jeroen Bouwman, Vincent Coudé du Foresto, Mercedes Lopez-Morales, Ingo Mueller-Wodarg, Enric Pallé, Franck Selsis, Alessandro Sozzetti, Jean-Philippe Beaulieu, Thomas Henning, Michael Meyer, Giuseppina Micela, Ignasi Ribas, Daphne Stam, Mark Swain, Oliver Krause, Marc Ollivier, Emanuele Pace, Bruce Swinyard, Peter A.R. Ade, Nick Achilleos, Alberto Adriani, Craig B. Agnor, Cristina Afonso, Carlos Allende Prieto, Gaspar Bakos, Robert J. Barber, Michael Barlow, Peter Bernath, Bruno Bézard, Pascal Bordé, Linda R. Brown, Arnaud Cassan, Céline Cavarroc, Angela Ciaravella, Charles Cockell, Athéna Coustenis, Camilla Danielski, Leen Decin, Remco De Kok, Olivier Demangeon, Pieter Deroo, Peter Doel, Pierre Drossart, Leigh N. Fletcher, Matteo Focardi, Francois Forget, Steve Fossey, Pascal Fouqué, James Frith, Marina Galand, Patrick Gaulme, Jonay I. González Hernández, Davide Grassi, Matt J. Griffin, Ulrich Grözinger, Manuel Guedel, Pactrick Guio, Olivier Hainaut, Robert Hargreaves, Peter H. Hauschildt, Kevin Heng, David Heyrovsky, Ricardo Hueso, Pat Irwin, Lisa Kaltenegger, Patrick Kervella, David Kipping, Geza Kovacs, Antonino La Barbera, Helmut Lammer, Emmanuel Lellouch, Giuseppe Leto, Mercedes Lopez Morales, Miguel A. Lopez Valverde, Manuel Lopez-Puertas, Christophe Lovi, Antonio Maggio, Jean-Pierre Maillard, Jesus Maldonado Prado, Jean-Baptiste Marquette, Francisco J. Martin-Torres, Pierre Maxted, Steve Miller, Sergio Molinari, David Montes, Amaya Moro-Martin, Olivier Mousis, Napoléon Nguyen Tuong, Richard Nelson, Glenn S. Orton, Eric Pantin, Enzo Pascale, Stefano Pezzuto, Ennio Poretti, Raman Prinja, Loredana Prisinzano, Jean-Michel Réess, Ansgar Reiners, Benjamin Samuel, Jorge Sanz Forcada, Dimitar Sasselov, Giorgio Savini, Bruno Sicardy, Alan Smith, Lars Stixrude, Giovanni Strazzulla, Gautam Vasisht, Sandrine Vinatier, Serena Viti, Ingo Waldmann, Glenn J. White, Thomas Widemann, Roger Yelle, Yuk Yung, Sergey Yurchenko
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- Journal:
- Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union / Volume 6 / Issue S276 / October 2010
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 10 November 2011, pp. 359-370
- Print publication:
- October 2010
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The science of extra-solar planets is one of the most rapidly changing areas of astrophysics and since 1995 the number of planets known has increased by almost two orders of magnitude. A combination of ground-based surveys and dedicated space missions has resulted in 560-plus planets being detected, and over 1200 that await confirmation. NASA's Kepler mission has opened up the possibility of discovering Earth-like planets in the habitable zone around some of the 100,000 stars it is surveying during its 3 to 4-year lifetime. The new ESA's Gaia mission is expected to discover thousands of new planets around stars within 200 parsecs of the Sun. The key challenge now is moving on from discovery, important though that remains, to characterisation: what are these planets actually like, and why are they as they are?
In the past ten years, we have learned how to obtain the first spectra of exoplanets using transit transmission and emission spectroscopy. With the high stability of Spitzer, Hubble, and large ground-based telescopes the spectra of bright close-in massive planets can be obtained and species like water vapour, methane, carbon monoxide and dioxide have been detected. With transit science came the first tangible remote sensing of these planetary bodies and so one can start to extrapolate from what has been learnt from Solar System probes to what one might plan to learn about their faraway siblings. As we learn more about the atmospheres, surfaces and near-surfaces of these remote bodies, we will begin to build up a clearer picture of their construction, history and suitability for life.
The Exoplanet Characterisation Observatory, EChO, will be the first dedicated mission to investigate the physics and chemistry of Exoplanetary Atmospheres. By characterising spectroscopically more bodies in different environments we will take detailed planetology out of the Solar System and into the Galaxy as a whole.
EChO has now been selected by the European Space Agency to be assessed as one of four M3 mission candidates.
Ultraviolet Spectroscopy of the Outer Solar System
- Roger V. Yelle
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- Journal:
- Highlights of Astronomy / Volume 9 / 1992
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 30 March 2016, pp. 561-562
- Print publication:
- 1992
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This talk will focus on the information to be gained through UV reflectance spectroscopy of atmospheres in the outer solar system. Here, we are concerned with the spectral region below 3000 Å, where many interesting molecular species have significant absorption cross sections, and observations must be made from sounding rockets or space-based observatories. With the exception of a few important rocket measurements the bulk of the observations in this region to dat have been made with the Voyager spacecraft and IUE observatories. The Voyager Ultraviolet Spectrometer (UVS) measurements offer the advantage of relatively high spatial resolution while IUE permits repeated measurements over a long time base. HST will combine both features and should led to a significant advancement in our understanding of outer solar system atmospheres.