Exoplanet detection capability of the COROT space mission

Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0305159

From: Pascal Borde’ <pascal.borde@obspm.fr>

Date: Fri, 9 May 2003 16:49:59 GMT   (63kb)

Authors:
P. Borde,
D. Rouan,
A. Leger

Comments: 8 pages, 7 figures, accepted by A&A

COROT will be the first high precision photometric satellite to be launched
with the aim of detecting exoplanets by the transit method. In this paper, we
present the simulations we have carried out in order to assess the detection
capability of COROT. Using the model of stellar population synthesis of the
Galaxy developed at Besancon Observatory (Robin & Creze 1986) and a simple
cross-correlation technique (Borde et al. 2001), we find that COROT has the
capacity to detect numerous exoplanets, not only Jupiter and Uranus-class ones,
but also hot terrestrial planets, if they exist. We show that small exoplanets
should be mainly gathered around 14-15th magnitude K2-M2 dwarfs and giant
exoplanets around 15-16th magnitude F7-G2 dwarfs. We study the effect of
crowding and the impact of a high stellar variability noise that both reduce
the detection capability of the instrument.

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