Blue Dots Team Transits Working Group Review

Sozzetti, A.; Afonso, C.; Alonso, R.; Blank, D. L.; Catala, C.; Deeg, H.; Grenfell, J. L.; Hellier, C.; Latham, D. W.; Minniti, D.; Pont, F.; Rauer, H.
Bibliographical reference

Pathways Towards Habitable Planets, proceedings of a workshop held 14 to 18 September 2009 in Barcelona, Spain. Edited by Vincent Coudé du Foresto, Dawn M. Gelino, and Ignasi Ribas. San Francisco: Astronomical Society of the Pacific, p.45

Advertised on:
10
2010
Number of authors
12
IAC number of authors
0
Citations
3
Refereed citations
0
Description
Transiting planet systems offer a unique opportunity to observationally constrain proposed models of the interiors (radius, composition) and atmospheres (chemistry, dynamics) of extrasolar planets. The spectacular successes of ground-based transit surveys (more than 60 transiting systems known to-date) and the host of multi-wavelength, spectro-photometric follow-up studies, carried out in particular by HST and Spitzer, have paved the way to the next generation of transit search projects, which are currently ongoing (CoRoT, Kepler), or planned. The possibility of detecting and characterizing transiting Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone of their parent stars appears tantalizingly close. In this contribution we briefly review the power of the transit technique for characterization of extrasolar planets, summarize the state of the art of both ground-based and space-borne transit search programs, and illustrate how the science of planetary transits fits within the Blue Dots perspective.