Closeby Habitable Exoplanet Survey (CHES). IV. Synergy between Astrometry and Direct Imaging Missions of the Habitable World Observatory for Detecting Earth-like Planets

The detection and characterization of habitable planets around nearby stars persist as some of the foremost objectives in contemporary astrophysics. This work investigates the synergistic integration of astrometric and direct imaging techniques by capitalizing on the complementary capabilities of th...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Chunhui Bao, Jianghui Ji, Dongjie Tan, Guo Chen, Xiumin Huang, Su Wang, Yao Dong
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IOP Publishing 2025-01-01
Series:The Astronomical Journal
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/add5de
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The detection and characterization of habitable planets around nearby stars persist as some of the foremost objectives in contemporary astrophysics. This work investigates the synergistic integration of astrometric and direct imaging techniques by capitalizing on the complementary capabilities of the Closeby Habitable Exoplanet Survey (CHES) and Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO). Planetary brightness and position vary over time due to phase effects and orbital architecture, information that can be precisely provided by CHES’s astrometric measurements. By combining the precise orbital constraints from CHES with the imaging capabilities of HWO, we evaluate the improvements in detection efficiency, signal-to-noise ratio, and overall planet yield. Completeness is quantified as the fraction of injected planets that are successfully detected, while yields are estimated for various scenarios using terrestrial planet occurrence rates derived from the Kepler data set. Our results indicate that prior astrometric data significantly enhance detection efficiency. Under the adopted detection limit, our analysis indicates that prior CHES observations can increase completeness by approximately 10% and improve detection efficiency by factors ranging from 2 to 30. The findings underscore the importance of interdisciplinary approaches in the search for and characterization of habitable worlds.
ISSN:1538-3881