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Abstract We present design considerations for the Transiting Exosatellites, Moons, and Planets in Orion (TEMPO) Survey with the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. This proposed 30 days survey is designed to detect a population of transiting extrasolar satellites, moons, and planets in the Orion Nebula Cluster (ONC). The young (1–3 Myr), densely populated ONC harbors about a thousand bright brown dwarfs (BDs) and free-floating planetary-mass objects (FFPs). TEMPO offers sufficient photometric precision to monitor FFPs with M >1 M J for transiting satellites. The survey is also capable of detecting FFPs down to sub-Saturn masses via direct imaging, although follow-up confirmation will be challenging. TEMPO yield estimates include 14 (3–22) exomoons/satellites transiting FFPs and 54 (8–100) satellites transiting BDs. Of this population, approximately 50% of companions would be “super-Titans” (Titan to Earth mass). Yield estimates also include approximately 150 exoplanets transiting young Orion stars, of which >50% will orbit mid-to-late M dwarfs. TEMPO would provide the first census demographics of small exosatellites orbiting FFPs and BDs, while simultaneously offering insights into exoplanet evolution at the earliest stages. This detected exosatellite population is likely to be markedly different from the current census of exoplanets with similar masses (e.g., Earth-mass exosatellites that still possess H/He envelopes). Although our yield estimates are highly uncertain, as there are no known exoplanets or exomoons analogous to these satellites, the TEMPO survey would test the prevailing theories of exosatellite formation and evolution, which limit the certainty surrounding detection yields.
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Euclid-Roman joint microlensing survey: Early mass measurement, free floating planets, and exomoons
As the Kepler mission has done for hot exoplanets, the ESA Euclid and NASA Roman missions have the potential to create a breakthrough in our understanding of the demographics of cool exoplanets, including unbound, or free-floating, planets (FFPs). Roman will dedicate part of its core survey program to the detection of cool exoplanets via microlensing, while Euclid may undertake a microlensing program as an ancillary science goal. In this study, we demonstrate the complementarity of the two missions and propose two joint surveys to better constrain the mass and distance of microlensing events. We first demonstrate that an early brief Euclid survey (~7 h) of the Roman microlensing fields will allow the measurement of at least 30% of the events’ relative proper motions µ rel and 42% of the lens magnitudes. This survey would place strong constraints on the mass and distance on thousands of microlensing events observed by Roman just after the first year of observation. Then, we study the potential of simultaneous observations by Roman and Euclid to enable the measurement of the microlensing parallax for the shortest microlensing events and, ultimately, obtain a direct measurement of the masses, distances, and transverse motions of FFPs. Using detailed simulations of the joint detection yield we show that within one year Roman-Euclid observations will be at least an order of magnitude more sensitive than current ground-based measurements. The recent tentative detection of an excess of short-duration events by the OGLE survey is consistent with a scenario of up to ten Earth-mass FFPs per Galactic star. For such a scenario a joint Roman-Euclid campaign should detect around 130 FFP events within a year, including 110 with measured parallax that strongly constrain the FFP mass, and around 30 FFP events with direct mass and distance measurements. The ability of the joint survey to completely break the microlens mass-distance-velocity degeneracy for a significant subset of events provides a unique opportunity to verify unambiguously the FFP hypothesis or else place abundance limits for FFPs between Earth and Jupiter masses that are up to two orders of magnitude stronger than provided by ground-based surveys. Finally, we study the capabilities of the joint survey to enhance the detection and characterization of exomoons, and find that it could lead to the detection of the first exomoon.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1852356
- PAR ID:
- 10444221
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Astronomy & Astrophysics
- Volume:
- 664
- ISSN:
- 0004-6361
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- A136
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202140351
