Kavli Affiliate: Bruce Macintosh
| First 5 Authors: Christopher C. Stark, Sarah Steiger, Armen Tokadjian, Dmitry Savransky, Rus Belikov
| Summary:
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.
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