LOTUS: wide-field monitoring nanosatellite for finding long-period transiting planets

Hajime Kawahara; Kento Masuda; Takayuki Kotani; Shotaro Tada; Hirokazu Kataza; Satoshi Ikari; Hiroki Aohama; Takayuki Hosonuma; Wataru Mikuriya; Masahiro Ikoma; Satoshi Kasahara; Shigeyuki Sako; Seiji Sugita; Eri Tatsumi; Kazuo Yoshioka

doi:10.1117/12.2562266

13 December 2020 LOTUS: wide-field monitoring nanosatellite for finding long-period transiting planets

Hajime Kawahara, Kento Masuda, Takayuki Kotani, Shotaro Tada, Hirokazu Kataza, Satoshi Ikari, Hiroki Aohama, Takayuki Hosonuma, Wataru Mikuriya, Masahiro Ikoma, Satoshi Kasahara, Shigeyuki Sako, Seiji Sugita, Eri Tatsumi, Kazuo Yoshioka

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 11443, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2020: Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter Wave; 1144316 (2020) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2562266
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2020, Online Only

Abstract

Although astronomers have confirmed the existence of 4,000 exoplanets to date, it is still difficult to directly compare exoplanets with the planets in our solar system because most of the known transiting exoplanets have an orbital period shorter than 1 year. Recent analyses of the 4-year data from the Kepler spacecraft revealed dozens of long-period transiting exoplanets and showed that their abundance is of order unity around Sun-like stars. However, the stars targeted by Kepler are too faint to conduct follow-up observations. The on-going all-sky survey mission TESS, with four 10.5 cm cameras with a field of view of 24 deg x 24 deg, is finding nearby transiting planets; however, the nominal observation period (1 month{1 year) is too short to find long-period planets with au-scale orbits. Herein, we propose using the LOng-period Transiting exoplanet sUrvey Satellite (LOTUS) mission, which employs a 7.5 cm wide-field (33 deg x 33 deg) camera placed on a nanosatellite, to continuously monitor the same sky region and find long-period planets transiting nearby bright stars. We present a conceptual design for the optics and bus system of LOTUS. Our optical system has a uniform point spread function over the entire field of view and a wide wavelength range (0.5{1.0 um). The bus system is designed to ensure that the pointing precision is sufficient to achieve the sub-percent photometry required for the detection of transiting exoplanets.

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Hajime Kawahara, Kento Masuda, Takayuki Kotani, Shotaro Tada, Hirokazu Kataza, Satoshi Ikari, Hiroki Aohama, Takayuki Hosonuma, Wataru Mikuriya, Masahiro Ikoma, Satoshi Kasahara, Shigeyuki Sako, Seiji Sugita, Eri Tatsumi, and Kazuo Yoshioka "LOTUS: wide-field monitoring nanosatellite for finding long-period transiting planets", Proc. SPIE 11443, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2020: Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter Wave, 1144316 (13 December 2020); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2562266

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