Transmission Spectroscopy of Exo-Solar Systems in the TESS Era

Abstract:

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission is currently
viewing the nearest and brightest stars in the night sky in search for
exoplanets via the transit method (Ricker et al. 2015). This method is
sensitive to planets with closer in orbits, and is expected to yield
many potentially Venus-like worlds (Ostberg Kane 2019). In contrast
to the Kepler mission, the stars selected by TESS are sufficiently
bright to allow for follow-up observations of planetary atmospheres.
We have already peered into the atmospheres of hot jupiter and
sub-neptune like worlds, and the James Webb Space Telescope will soon
provide the ability to observe the atmospheres of terrestrial planets.
In this work we are especially interested in systems with a
terrestrial planet in the Venus Zone (VZ Kane et al. 2014), and
another terrestrial planet in the Habitable Zone (HZ Kopparapu et al.
2013). These systems are potentially analogous to the Earth and Venus,
and can provide the first opportunity to directly compare the
evolutions of the solar system terrestrial planets to other systems.
In this work we present new methods of comparing the spectra of two
planets in the same system. Hypothetically, this method will negate
the need of subtracting stellar effects from the spectra of the
planets, and will allow the opportunity to directly compare the
atmospheric compositions of the two planets with less required
observation time.