Updated 2024 December 23

The Exoplanets Division of the Asteroid and Remote Planets Section is collaborating with other amateurs and professional astronomers to provide ground-based observations of exoplanet transits in support of the ARIEL Space Mission.

The ARIEL, Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey,will survey approximately 1000 targets. Some of these will not have been observed for several years and therefore predicted transit times could be in error and thus missed by ARIEL when imaging that particular event.

Science Objectives of the mission;
• Detect and determine the composition and structure of a large number of planetary atmospheres
• Constrain planetary interiors by removing degeneracies in the interpretation of mass-radius diagrams
• Constrain planetary formation and evolution models through measurements of the elemental composition (evidence for migration)
• Determine the energy budget of planetary atmospheres (albedo, vertical and horizontal temperature structure, weather/temporal variations)
• Identify and constrain chemical processes at work (thermochemistry, photochemistry, transport, quenching, etc.)
• Constrain the properties of clouds (cloud type, particle size, distribution, patchiness, etc.)
• Investigate the impact of stellar and planetary environment on exoplanet properties
• Identification of different populations of planets and atmospheres (for example, through colour diagrams)
• Capacity to do a population study AND go into a detailed study of select planets

Exoplanet Division participation in the project was announced in a special issue,5, of the emagazine, Infinite Worlds, which can be linked to at
Infinite Worlds Issue 5.pdf

Project details are available at ARIEL Space Mission V7.1.pdf

Presentations given at the ARPS meeting at Clanfield on 2019 September 29
The ExoClock Project by Anastasia Kokori – ARPS_exoclock_compressed.pdf
An Introduction to Astrobiology by the late Peta Bosley – Astrobiology_Sept 2019.pdf