2025/02/25 by Christopher C. Stark, Sarah Steiger, Stark, Christopher C. +21 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP) #FOS: Physical sciences #History and Developments in Astronomy #Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM) #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2502.18556
openalex publication_date 2025/02/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Estimating the exoplanet scientific productivity of the Habitable Worlds Observatory requires estimating science exposure times. From exoplanet yields to spectral retrievals, exposure times are at the heart of our understanding of the capabilities of this future mission. As such, ensuring accuracy and consistency between different exposure time calculators (ETCs) is critical. We summarize the efforts of the Exoplanet Science Yield sub-Working Group's ETC Calibration Task Group, which conducted a calibration study from March 4 to June 30 of 2024. We compare three commonly-used coronagraphic exposure time calculators. We find that the ETCs use a broad variety of differing methods, assumptions, and inputs that produce variation in the final exposure times at the ~60% level. The causes for the disagreement have largely been identified, flagged for further development efforts, and in some cases retired since the conclusion of this effort. We expect that addressing the flagged efforts will bring the ETCs to within better than ~30% agreement.