Authors

P.O. Lagage on behalf of the European MIRI team

Affiliations

CEA Saclay

Abstract

The next large space facility which will provide crucial observations to characterize exoplanets will be the JWST, to be operational in 2015. Of particular interest will be the Mid-InfraRed instrument (MIRI) build by a European - US consortium. Thanks to the large collecting area of the JWST (about 50 times larger than Spitzer), MIRI will allow to observe at low spectral resolution the secondary transit of many exoplanets with masses ranging from 10 Jupiter masses to a few Earth masses (super-Earths). Thanks to the large angular resolution of the JWST (8 times better than Spitzer) and to the implementation of 4 coronagraphs in MIRI (3 phase masks and a Lyot mask), MIRI will be able to study, by direct imaging, a set of exoplanets with parameters complementary to those observed via transit (younger, at a larger distance from the star…) and from the ground with planet finders (later type stars). After a short description of MIRI and its capabilities, we will show detailed simulations of MIRI exoplanets observations.