The Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) will deploy a new array of telescopes in Chile’s Atacama Desert to find small planets around nearby stars. Current surveys struggle with instrument noise that masks the faint signals of planets like ice giants and super-Earths. NGTS eliminates that noise, allowing it to detect planets roughly the size of Neptune or smaller—objects that are largely invisible to existing wide-field surveys. Over four years, the survey expects to improve on Kepler’s results for similar planet populations by a factor of 16. This is fundamental science: the goal is to answer basic questions about how planets form and what they are made of, such as the internal structure of super-Earths. The real-world payoff lies downstream. Planets discovered by NGTS will become prime targets for the James Webb Space Telescope and future observatories like the European Extremely Large Telescope, which can study their atmospheres for signs of composition and, potentially, habitability. The data will be publicly archived by the European Southern Observatory, giving the entire astronomical community access.
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The Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) is poised to become the leading survey of exoplanets during the coming decade and springboard UK scientists to leading roles in this important area of research. Based around our WASP heritage and international collaborations, we have designed and procured almost the complete facility. This included building and testing a prototype instrument running on La Palma where various technologies were tested and the risks to the project mitigated. This instrument allowed us to find technologies and strategies where we can virtually eliminate instrument systematic noise - a problem that severely limits the performance of all other wide field surveys and, hence, allows us to unlock the full potential of our survey. The quality of the NGTS data of a single object will be similar in to that obtained from a much larger telescope but will be available for all objects over a much larger field than is traditionally the case. Thus we know we can routinely reach accuracy sufficient to detect ice giants and super-Earth planets around nearby stars which will not only allow us to answer fundamental questions about the composition and origin of planets (eg what is the internal structure of super-Earths?) but also to discover planets that will be prized targets for atmospheric studies with facilities currently being built (JWST) or those being planned (eg E-ELT and a number of space missions). Over the course of a 4 year survey this will allow a factor of 16 improvement over the Kepler results for a comparable planet population. In this endevour, NGTS is partnered with ESO who have contributed a site at Paranal (the best site in the world for our purposes) and will distribute our reduced light curves to the wider astronomical community through the ESO archive. In this proposal we request STFC support to contribute to the deployment and operation of the facility (and a small capital contribution to be matched by our institutes) over a 4 year period. These duties are divided into five work packages that deal with all aspects of the project. Science exploitation costs we will seek through other opportunities open to us.
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