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Rene Doyon,
University of Montreal

Abstract

Small, temperate, rocky planets around low-mass stars are now known to be abundant in the solar neighborhood. Current occurrence-rate estimates indicate that a significant fraction (15– 50%) of M dwarfs host at least one planet in the habitable zone, raising the exciting possibility that a fraction of these worlds possess atmospheres and surface conditions suitable for liquid water. Among them, transiting systems are for now the easiest to study. Only a handful meet the stringent criteria of habitable-world candidates, that is planets in the habitable zone with precisely measured masses and radii, enabling detailed internal-structure models and constraints on their possible water inventories. The James Webb Space Telescope offers, for the first time, the capability to determine whether such planets retain an atmosphere through transmission spectroscopy and thermal-emission photometry, and to probe its composition if present. In this seminar, I will briefly highlight the current status of JWST observations of nearby rocky planets, along with essential complementary contributions from ground-based high-resolution spectroscopy, notably SPIRou and NIRPS. I will conclude with a perspective on the next major step: the characterization of nearby non-transiting habitable worlds with the European Extremely Large Telescope, poised to transform the exoplanet field in the next decade.

Timbits, coffee, tea will be served in STI A before the colloquium.