4. Exploring the data reduction pipeline for the Ariel exoplanet mission

ESA supervisor: Stephan Birkmann
Collaborator(s): Anja Hofmann, Elena Racero

Site: ESAC

Ariel is an upcoming ESA exoplanet mission, designed to perform a large survey of diverse exoplanets (goal >1000 planets observed) and to characterise their atmospheres during the nominal four-year mission. The telescope will observe each planet during multiple transits of and/or eclipses by its host star: during a transit, a fraction of the starlight is blocked by the planet and an even smaller fraction is filtered through the planet’s atmosphere; during an eclipse, the reflected and/or emitted light of the dayside of the planet’s atmosphere is blocked by the star. Both types of observations can be utilized to deduce the composition of the planet’s atmosphere by analysing the obtained transit/eclipse spectra.

The atmospheric signatures of exoplanets are typically very small, often measured in parts per million (ppm). Achieving the level of precision required to detect such faint signals involves 1) collecting vast numbers of photons per spectral bin to reach an extremely high signal-to-noise ratio, and 2) applying sophisticated data reduction and calibration techniques. These techniques must correct for numerous factors, including detector artefacts (e.g., dark current), instrumental effects (e.g., throughput variations), spacecraft influences (e.g., pointing errors or jitter), and astronomical phenomena (e.g., limb darkening, stellar variability). In recent years, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has set new benchmarks for near-infrared exoplanet spectroscopy, demonstrating the power and necessity of advanced data pipelines to extract atmospheric information from such challenging observations.

Building on lessons learned from JWST, the Ariel Mission Consortium (AMC) is developing a dedicated data reduction pipeline to address these challenges. The pipeline, designed to deliver transit and eclipse spectra of the highest possible quality, will be deployed at the Science Operations Centre (SOC) at ESAC in Madrid, Spain. The goal of the internship is to explore and assess the AMC-developed pipeline within the SOC environment, using both simulated data and ground-based test datasets. The selected Trainee will become familiar with the Ariel pipeline’s structure and algorithms and will have the opportunity to directly compare its performance and methodology to those of JWST. By offering feedback on pipeline development and deployment, the Trainee will contribute valuable insights for the Ariel mission, while also gaining a deeper understanding of ESA as an international organisation and about ESAC’s science operations in particular. 

Project duration: 6 months.

Desirable expertise or programming language:

• Some experience with command line computing (e.g. terminal, Unix).
• A scripting language (e.g. python) is beneficial.

To apply for this project please fill in an online application form through the following link.

To see the full list of Internships available at ESA please go to our website for ESA Career Opportunities.