The Effect of the Transit of Venus on ACRIM's Total Solar Irradiance Measurements: Implications for Transit Studies of Extrasolar Planets

Abstract

We used the 8 June 2004 transit of Venus (ToV) as a surrogate to test observing methods, strategies and techniques that are being contemplated for future space missions to detect and characterize extrasolar terrestrial planets (ETPs) as they transit their host stars, notably NASA's Kepler mission planned for 2008. As an analog to "Kepler-like" photometric transit observations, we obtained (spatially unresolved) radiometric observations with the ACRIM 3 instrument on ACRIMSAT to follow the effect of the ToV on the total solar irradiance (TSI). Contemporaneous high-resolution broadband imagery with NASA's TRACE spacecraft provided, directly, measures of the stellar (solar) astrophysical noise that can intrinsically limit such transit observations. During the ~ 5.5 h transit, the planet's angular diameter was approximately 1/32 the solar diameter, thus covering ~ 0.1 of the stellar surface. With our ACRIM 3 data, we measure temporal changes in TSI with a 1 sigma per sample (unbinned) uncertainty of approximately 100 mW m^-2 (0.007%). A diminution in TSI of ~ 1.4 W m^-2 (~ 0.1%, closely corresponding to the geometrically occulted area of the photosphere) was measured at mid-transit compared with a mean pre/post transit TSI of ~ 1365.9 W m^-2. These observations serve as a surrogate to future photometric observations of ETPs such as Kepler will deliver. Detailed analysis of the ToV, a rare event within our own solar system, with time-resolved radiometry augmented with high-resolution imagery provides a useful analogue for investigating the detectability and characterization of ETPs from observations that are anticipated in the near future.