SPECULOOS: a network of robotic telescopes to hunt for terrestrial planets around the nearest ultracool dwarfs

TL;DR

SPECULOOS is a network of robotic telescopes designed to discover terrestrial planets around ultracool dwarfs, aiming to understand their frequency, composition, and habitability for future atmospheric studies.

Contribution

It introduces a novel telescope network targeting ultracool dwarfs to find and characterize potentially habitable terrestrial exoplanets.

Findings

Targeting ~1200 ultracool dwarfs in infrared brightness

Enabling atmospheric characterization with next-gen telescopes

Assessing the frequency and diversity of terrestrial planets

Abstract

We present here SPECULOOS, a new exoplanet transit search based on a network of 1m-class robotic telescopes targeting the $\sim$1200 ultracool (spectral type M7 and later) dwarfs bright enough in the infrared ($K$-mag $\leq 12.5$) to possibly enable the atmospheric characterization of temperate terrestrial planets with next-generation facilities like the $\textit{James Webb Space Telescope}$. The ultimate goals of the project are to reveal the frequency of temperate terrestrial planets around the lowest-mass stars and brown dwarfs, to probe the diversity of their bulk compositions, atmospheres and surface conditions, and to assess their potential habitability.