APP Template V1.01 Article id: apj513330 Typesetter: MPS Date received by MPS: 19/05/2015 PE: CE : LE: UNCORRECTED PROOF The Astrophysical Journal, 00:000000 (28pp), 2015 Month Day © 2015. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. TRUE MASSES OF RADIAL-VELOCITY EXOPLANETS Robert A. Brown Space Telescope Science Institute, USA;
[email protected] Received 2015 January 12; accepted 2015 April 14; published 2015 MM DD ABSTRACT We study the task of estimating the true masses of known radial-velocity (RV) exoplanets by means of direct astrometry on coronagraphic images to measure the apparent separation between exoplanet and host star. Initially, we assume perfect knowledge of the RV orbital parameters and that all errors are due to photon statistics. We construct design reference missions for four missions currently under study at NASA: EXO-S and WFIRST-S, with external star shades for starlight suppression, EXO-C and WFIRST-C, with internal coronagraphs. These DRMs reveal extreme scheduling constraints due to the combination of solar and anti-solar pointing restrictions, photometric and obscurational completeness, image blurring due to orbital motion, and the “nodal effect,” which is the independence of apparent separation and inclination when the planet crosses the plane of the sky through the host star. Next, we address the issue of nonzero uncertainties in RV orbital parameters by investigating their impact on the observations of 21 single-planet systems. Except for two—GJ 676 A b and 16 Cyg B b, which are observable only by the star-shade missions—we find that current uncertainties in orbital parameters generally prevent accurate, unbiased estimation of true planetary mass.