2004/04/05 by David P. Bennett, D. P. Bennett, Bennett, David P.
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Adaptive optics and wavefront sensing #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #History and Developments in Astronomy #Space exploration and regulation #Spacecraft Design and Technology #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/0404075
8 pages with 13 included postscript figures. To Appear in the Proceedings of the XIXth IAP Colloquium, "Extrasolar Planets Today and Tomorrow", held a the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris on June 30-July 4, 2003
arxiv created 2004/04/05 · openalex publication_date 2004/04/05 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
I compare an aggressive ground-based gravitational microlensing survey for\nterrestrial planets to a space-based survey. The Ground-based survey assumes a\nglobal network of very wide field-of-view ~2m telescopes that monitor fields in\nthe central Galactic bulge. I find that such a space-based survey is ~100 times\nmore effective at detecting terrestrial planets in Earth-like orbits. The poor\nsensitivity of the ground-based surveys to low-mass planets is primarily due to\nthe fact that the main sequence source stars are unresolved in ground-based\nimages of the Galactic bulge. This gives rise to systematic photometry errors\nthat preclude the detection of most of the planetary light curve deviations for\nlow mass planets.\n