CHALLENGE

Navigator for the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO): Mapping the Characterizable Exoplanets in our Galaxy

Which exoplanets will be observable with the future Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO)? One way of determining the most interesting exoplanetary targets for HWO would be to visualize which of the currently known exoplanets HWO could potentially observe. Your challenge is to develop an app that enables users to visualize the observational paths across our galaxy to the known exoplanets in the solar neighborhood as a function of their potential for characterization by HWO.

Background

Since 1995, thousands of planets orbiting stars other than our Sun (exoplanets) have been discovered. Most of these exoplanets are gas giants that orbit very close to their stars. Exoplanets have been discovered mainly using indirect methods, e.g., by measuring the effect that they have on their host stars. Since an exoplanet’s signal is so small compared to that of its star, it has been extremely difficult to identify exoplanets directly. HWO is an upcoming Great Observatory concept that NASA is developing to directly image exoplanets and expand our knowledge of these Earth-like bodies. When planning for this next-generation mission, it is helpful to understand how the instrument parameters can impact the physical parameters that we can explore. One way of doing so is to visualize which of the currently known exoplanets could be observed by HWO for further characterization. In particular, two key parameters will define the ability of HWO to characterize an exoplanet: 1) the distance to the exoplanetary system—the further the distance to the exoplanet, the fainter and closer to its host star it appears; and 2) the diameter of the HWO telescope—a bigger telescope allows us to better separate the exoplanet from the star.

Objectives

Your challenge is to develop an app to visualize in 3D the observational paths to the known exoplanets as a function of their potential for characterization by HWO. A currently updated list of the known exoplanets is stored in the NASA Exoplanet Archive. Think about how your app could show which of these exoplanets could be detectable by HWO and how many more could be observable by changing one or more of the HWO instrument and telescope parameters. Your app could show observatory stakeholders the potential performance of HWO! Your app could explore the general space of parameters, focus on varying a specific parameter, or even show the different populations of exoplanets that are easier or harder to characterize based on their orbit around the star, the stellar class of their host star, etc. You could create an interactive app and/or develop some kind of feature to easily visualize the most promising and the “stretch goal” candidates for HWO to observe.

Potential Considerations

You may (but are not required to) consider the following:

• Your target audience is composed of all levels of NASA stakeholders: e.g., citizens, politicians, managers.
• Your tool could:
  • Explore the impact of different telescope or instrument parameters to characterize the population of known exoplanets.
  • Color-code the different exoplanetary and stellar parameters to indicate connections between populations of stars and exoplanets and their observability with HWO.
  • Show the distribution of the known parameters across the sky.
• Your tool could be interactive; e.g., allowing users to filter exoplanetary systems based on different telescope diameters would be an advanced app capability.