VROOMM: A High-Resolution Optical Echelle Spectrograph for the Observatoire du Mont-Mégantic

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The ultimate objective of this proposal is to find the nearest habitable terrestrial planets, measure their mass, probe their atmosphere and to determine their chemical composition which is a key stepping-stone in our quest for Life outside the Solar System. Through the development of several forefront instrumental facilities specialized for the detection and characterisation of exoplanets, our team is positioned for forefront international leadership in this exciting endeavour. Transiting exoplanets are key systems; they are planets that happen to pass, from our perspective, in front of their star once every orbit, causing a slight dimming of their flux. *** Our team is developing a high-resolution fiber-fed optical spectrograph, VROOMM, for the 1.6m telescope of the Observatoire du Mont-Mégantic (OMM), an instrument specialized for measuring, with very high accuracy (a few m/s), the radial velocity of nearby bright stars suspected to host one or several transiting exoplanets. These new planetary systems will soon be unveiled by several surveys including the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), a NASA mission that started its operation this year, to conduct an all-sky search for nearby exoplanets. TESS is predicted to find at least 1700 new, nearby transiting systems, including the best habitable world candidates, prime targets for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to probe their atmosphere, in search of water, CO2 and other molecules involved in biological activity.*** We plan on dedicating a significant fraction (~2/3) of OMM time to VROOMM, whose observations will be used to confirm the exoplanet nature of the TESS candidates and enable detailed studies of these new exoplanets and their host star. VROOMM will work in close synergy with other facilities specialized for exoplanet studies such as SPIRou on the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope and NIRISS, the Canadian-built JWST instrument featuring an observing mode specialized for atmospheric studies of exoplanets. *** VROOMM is a unique photon-counting high-resolution optical spectrograph that will also serve as the first pathfinder of instruments specialized for biosignature detection anticipated in future giant ground- and space-based telescopes. VROOMM is also a general-purpose instrument that will benefit a large pool of users across Canada, enabling a wide range of scientific applications, from the determination of the fundamental parameters of stars of all mass, to stellar population studies of nearby galaxies. VROOMM will feed the work of several tens of graduate students across Canada working with a unique instrument in the world.*** RTI funding is requested to equip VROOMM with a specialized calibration unit that will improve the instrument radial velocity performance by at least an order of magnitude. This is key to enabling the precision of a few m/s that is required for measuring the mass of small planets orbiting around low-mass stars.*****