Abstract

We know of indirect evidences for remnants of planetary systems around white dwarfs (WDs), and the first Earth-mass objects outside our Solar System were found around a pulsar back in 1992. The small size of cool white dwarfs and their close-in ""habitable zones"" would make a transiting planet a unique laboratory to test the capabilities of the transmission spectroscopy technique to characterize exo-atmospheres. It has been suggested (Loeb & Maoz 2013) that a transiting planet around a WD could be searched for biomarkers using JWST. We have started a search for transiting planets around cool WDs (<7000K) using several 1-m class telescopes in summer 2013. Our goal is to observe for at least 8h a sample of 500-700 WDs before the JWST launch. We will present the current status of the survey and our sensitivity limits.

Presentation

Poster