On the Feasibility of Intense Radial Velocity Surveys for Earth-twin Discoveries

Understand

This work assesses the potential capability of the next generation of high-precision Radial Velocity (RV) instruments for Earth-twin exoplanet detection.

• From the perspective of the importance of data sampling, the Terra Hunting Experiment aims to do this through an intense series of nightly RV observations over a long baseline on a carefully selected target list, via the brand-new instrument HARPS3.
• This paper describes an end-to-end simulation of generating and processing such data to help us better understand the impact of uncharacterised stellar noise in the recovery of Earth-mass planets with orbital periods of the order of many months.
• We consider full Keplerian systems, realistic simulated stellar noise, instrument white noise, and location-specific weather patterns for our observation schedules.