Detecting and characterising habitable planets around brown dwarfs

Habitable Planets Eclipsing Brown Dwarfs: Strategies for Detection and Characterization
http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.4453

Discusses the prospects for detecting and also characterising transiting planets in the habitable zones of brown dwarfs. Detecting a biosignature in such a system would definitely be an interesting result!

A search for rocky planets transiting brown dwarfs
http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.7248

A proposal to use Spitzer to detect planets around brown dwarfs, with the objective of finding a planet that JWST can be used to characterise. A terrestrial planet orbiting a brown dwarf would provide a good test case for investigating the atmospheres of rocky exoplanets, even if the case for habitability of such systems has significant uncertainties.

I still find it amazing, though in retrospect probably inevitable, how our thoughts on where to find habitable worlds has evolved over the last couple of decades. At one time a habitable world orbiting a red dwarf would have been thought of as being unusual, even impossible. Now we're looking for them in orbit of brown dwarfs!

I wonder what such a world would be like....

...John...

Brown dwarfs just lose heat and get dimmer during their lifetimes, right? If so, would bright and hot brown dwarfs lose heat faster than cool and warm brown dwarfs? And would the rate of heat loss for brown dwarfs affect such searches for potential habitable worlds orbiting them?

I hope that this new proposal of detection of Transit planets around Brown Dwarf with Spitzer get approval soon

I hope not, because it' s too much time of using the telescope, that could be better used in the characterization of transiting planets (infrared transit and occultation). And to confirm and find previously discovered planets, as transiting ones.

The proposal it' s for almost a year. Too much.

Characterization of Transit planets,you mean characterization of Hot Jupiters and some hot neptunes well... nah,this planet to be true is not so attractive,like rock planets around the Nearby Brown Dwarfs

I stay with Brown Dwarf planetary systems,It's time for start look our nearby planetary systems,by Radial Velocity,Astrometry,Image and Transit as well,and this must Include the Nearby Brown Dwarfs,this is a unique opportunity for transit Brown Dwarf planets,specially rock ones in the HZ,because Spitzer far as I know is the only Mission in infrared that can do it.
Hot Jupiter,Hot-Neptunes and Super-Earth soon can be characterize by Cheops Mission from ESA that has been approve and expected to be launch in 2017.

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/ESA_Science_Programme_s_new_small_satellite_will_study_super-Earths

and second I hope the the telescope Keep Validate the Kepler Candidates,for me with this Brown dwarf project and Validate the Kepler candidates the Spitzer Mission will doing great,for me would be perfect

Daniel wrote:

Hot Jupiter,Hot-Neptunes and Super-Earth soon can be characterize by Cheops Mission from ESA that has been approve and expected to be launch in 2017.

No, it can' t do it. Because this small mission doesn' t have infrared detectors. The only telescope able to detect transits and eclipses in 3.6 and 4.5 micron bands is Spitzer.

It' s very important to take the more data as you can, to do good planetology. More than 200 days of observations in searching for nothing is a waste of time, and maybe you won' t detect any planet. I prefer to observe known transits and eclipses than anything.

Find your planet with another instrument, and then you will have time in Spitzer.

pochimax wrote:

It' s very important to take the more data as you can, to do good planetology. More than 200 days of observations in searching for nothing is a waste of time, and maybe you won' t detect any planet. I prefer to observe known transits and eclipses than anything.

Find your planet with another instrument, and then you will have time in Spitzer.

How you can be sure that Spitzer will find nothing? like you said a "searching for nothing"? It's not what the scientist of proposal think in the paper,but still it's a possibility

and which Instrument is Available for this interesting search of Mars-size planets transit a Brown Dwarf? the answer is none,because far as I know TESS for example won't be in infrared,if will TESS would be useful for search this planets around cool stars like later M dwarf and brown dwarfs,and there is not other mission or plan anytime soon for such researcher

but Hot Jupiters and hot-Neptunes,and bunch of this hot planets made of gas will have they own European mission Cheops

Well I support the proposal and if approve they will search this planets and if they find such planetary systems will be great

CHEOPS is a very small mission and only works in the visible part of the spectrum.

Characterizing planets, including those now "boring" hot ones is very important to have a complete picture of planetology.

The reserches of that paper were who said than they thing they can discover one planet with that time.

It' s not useful. You can use time of earth-based telescopes like IRTF, and search in other wavelengths.

I' m sure they will not obtain such an amount of time of Spitzer. They can make a pilot study to get an upper limit or a lucky discovery.