Determining What Makes a Planet Earth-like

该计划的核心是发现和描述系外行星，目标是找到可能与地球相似的行星，并了解类似地球的行星的特性。从宏观的角度来看，这个项目是了解我们在宇宙中是否孤独的一小步。加拿大科学家在发现第一批围绕遥远恒星的行星方面发挥了关键作用，加拿大在未来的基础设施方面进行了大量投资，以进一步增强加拿大在系外行星科学方面的实力。第一笔投资是为将于2018年发射的詹姆斯·韦伯太空望远镜（JWST）建造的光谱仪。这台名为NIRISS的光谱仪能够探测和描述可能与地球相似的系外行星。然而，JWST需要知道在哪里查找。该计划的主要目标是通过凌日法发现系外行星，并确定其特征和优先顺序。系外行星凌日发生在系外行星从它的主星前面经过的时候。凌日使主星看起来更暗，因为一些光线被阻挡了。观测到的光损失的特征可以建立模型来估计行星的大小和温度。所要求的资金将有助于发现和描述来自数百万颗恒星的罕见凌日事件。这些发现的行星将成为JWST的优先目标，以确定宇宙中是否存在其他类地行星。

The proposed program centers around the discovery and characterization of extrasolar planets, with a goal to find planets that may be similar to the Earth and to learn what properties make a planet Earth-like. Taking a big picture view, this program is one small step towards learning if we are alone in the Universe. Canadian scientists have played a key role in the discovery of the first planets around distant stars and Canada has made significant investments in future infrastructure to further Canada's strength in exoplanetary science. The first investment is a spectrograph built for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) that will launch in 2018. The spectrograph, named NIRISS has the ability to detect and characterization extrasolar planets that may be similar to the Earth. However, JWST needs to know where to look. The primary goal of the proposed program is to find, characterize and prioritize the extrasolar planets that are being discovered via the transit method. An exoplanet transit occurs when a exoplanet passes in front of its host star from our point-of-view. The transit makes the host star appear fainter as some light is blocked. The characteristics of the loss of light observed can be modeled to estimate the size and temperature of the planet. The requested funding will aid in finding and characterizing rare transiting events from millions of stars. The discovered planets will be priority targets for JWST in order to determine if other Earth-like planets exist in the Universe.