Detection Methods and Projects

CRIRES search for planets around the lowest-mass stars

Sirius_Alpha — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 15:14:18 GMT

High Precision Radial Velocity Measurements in the Infrared: A First Assessment of the RV Stability of CRIRES

A way to measure radial velocities in the infrared region of the spectrum is important for finding planets around M-type stars and brown dwarfs.

Mess new spectrograf California group - FINDS Exo-Earths or APF (RPF) ?

Borislav — Sun, 10 May 2009 21:27:37 GMT

On the one hand - http://www.planetary.org/programs/projects/finds/ The Planetary Society is teaming up with planet hunters Geoff Marcy of the University of California at Berkeley and Debra Fischer of San Francisco State University to help with the quest to find other "Earths," other worlds like our own, elsewhere in our galaxy. The project is called FINDS Exo-Earths (which stands for Fiber-optic Improved Next generation Doppler Search for Exo-Earths). This new high-end ...

ThReT

Lazarus — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:20:32 GMT

A Greek project to detect hot Jupiters. Is alternating upper- and lower-case the new trend for transit surveys? ThReT: A new survey for Extrasolar Planetary transits at Mt. Holomon, Greece First stage was producing an all-sky map of good hunting grounds for such planets: Transit detections of extrasolar planets around main-sequence stars - I. A sky map for Hot Jupiters

Kepler Channel Noise Problem

philw1776 — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:01:00 GMT

Really BAD news... Kepler, NASA's mission to search for planets around other stars, will not be able to spot an Earth-sized planet until 2011, according to the mission's team. The delays are caused by noisy amplifiers in the telescope's electronics. "We're not going to be able to find Earth-size planets in the habitable zone � or it's going to be very difficult � until that work gets done," says Kepler principal investigator William Borucki. Borucki says that the noise will ...

ESPRESSO

Borislav — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:04:21 GMT

http://espresso.astro.up.pt/science.php?show=chapter5 5.1 Distribution of GTO time among science cases The Consortium has agreed to conduct the different GTO programs as a common effort, with the following distribution of GTO time among science cases: 80% for low-mass extrasolar planets 10% for fundamental constants 10% for other, high-quality science to be determined at a later stage of the project In the following sections it is assumed that the Consortium will receive ...

Circumbinary planets by RV

Lazarus — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 19:37:59 GMT

Don't think this one got posted here... Title: The Radial Velocity TATOOINE Search for Circumbinary Planets: Planet Detection Limits for a Sample of Double-lined Binary Stars - Initial Results from Keck I/Hires, Shane/CAT/Hamspec and TNG/Sarg Observations No planets detected, but two things are impressive here: one, that radial velocity measurements of SB2 spectroscopic binaries can be made sufficiently accurately to detect circumbinary planets, two, that it is possible to come up with ...

Record photometric precision ground based telescopes

Borislav — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:24:12 GMT

http://www.astro.up.pt/investigacao/conferencias/toe2009/TOE2009_Abstracts_Book.pdf Ground Based Detection of Transiting Hot Earths Christopher J. Burke1 1 Harvard CFA Extrasolar planets that transit bright stars provide the opportunity to measure highly accurate planet radii and to detect and characterize planetary atmospheres outside the solar system. Transit and radial velocity surveys continue to push the envelope toward finding smaller planets. Is it possible to take advantage of ...

Far future of exoplanet detection

Sirius_Alpha — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:39:45 GMT

An interesting paper, sort of like those computer magazines that you can browse through and think "Oh I wish I had that." The Far Future of Exoplanet Direct Characterization http://arxiv.org/abs/0910.0726 abstract wrote:In this outlook we describe what could be the next steps of the direct characterization of habitable exoplanets after first the medium and large mission projects and investigate the benefits of the spectroscopic and direct imaging approaches. We show that after ...

IAU on confirmation of exoplanet detection

Phill — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 17:00:31 GMT

What does the IAU exactly require for the confirmation of an exoplanet detection?
Three identical occultations or wobble periods?
I couldn't find the IAU weblink for such requirements

Transits across rapidly-rotating stars

Lazarus — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 20:25:10 GMT

Thanks to gravity-darkening, you don't need to measure the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect to determine the angle between the equator of the star and the planetary orbit. Maybe Kepler will detect a few of these...

arXiv: Transit Lightcurves of Extrasolar Planets Orbiting Rapidly-Rotating Stars

10 years discovery first transit planet !

Borislav — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 10:15:56 GMT

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9911436

exoplanets for amateurs

Stalker — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 06:05:42 GMT

Hi

I would like to know if there was a possibility as students to participate in search of exoplanets

Are there projects to which it is possible to adhere?

What equipment needs him to have?

I had heard about a programme of monitorings of transits by students in dissertation. Can I have information about this?

I ask the same questions on the research of discs of dusts and brown dwarfs

Thanks

Alpha Centauri, the hunt for planets.

Sirius_Alpha — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 23:56:12 GMT

A well written article has appeared in Seed. In it, it is revealed that HARPS has been examining Alpha Centauri B since 2003. http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the_long_shot/ Since 2003, Mayor and his team have used HARPS to search for planets around Alpha Centauri B. Last August, they began observing the star every available night in a strategy similar to Fischer�s. In a recent [HARPS] survey, the team showed that one-third of about 200 nearby Sun-like stars harbor rocky, terrestrial ...

Interferometric space telescopes

Phill — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 13:28:22 GMT

Just wondered what the latest news is on ESA's Darwin mission (planned not earlier then 2016) and NASA's Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF deferred indefinitively?) ?

Planet spin-axis via RM effect?

Sirius_Alpha — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 14:36:32 GMT

The thought just hit me... Assuming a sufficiently precise telescope, and a sufficiently quiet star, couldn't the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect be used in reverse? Shouldn't we be able to detect the alignment between the planet's spin axis and its orbit? I'm thinking something like a transiting hot Neptune orbiting a quiet M dwarf or something. I would expect that with the planet in a synchronous orbit, and thus rotating slowly, there probably wouldn't be a large signal (not to mention the stellar ...

Radio astrometry constraints to planets orbiting near stars

Sirius_Alpha — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:27:07 GMT

Radio Interferometric Planet Search I: First Constraints on Planetary Companions for Nearby, Low-Mass Stars from Radio Astrometry http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.1680 Radio astrometry of nearby, low-mass stars has the potential to be a powerful tool for the discovery and characterization of planetary companions. We present a Very Large Array survey of 172 active M dwarfs at distances of less than 10 pc. Twenty nine stars were detected with flux densities greater than 100 microJy. We observed 7 ...

The MEarth project

Lazarus — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:11:41 GMT

The MEarth project: searching for transiting habitable super-Earths around nearby M-dwarfs

A description of the survey, plus some preliminary results. While no planets are reported (yet), a new M-dwarf+M-dwarf eclipsing binary has been discovered.

TESS expectations

Sirius_Alpha — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 01:09:23 GMT

Expected Planet and False Positive Detection Rates for the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite http://arxiv.org/abs/0812.1305 Abstract wrote:The proposed Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will survey the entire sky to locate the nearest and brightest transiting extrasolar planets with orbital periods up to about 36 days. Here we estimate the number and kind of astrophysical false positives that TESS will report, along with the number of extrasolar planets. These estimates are ...

SuperWASP search for additional planets in 24 known systems

Sirius_Alpha — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 12:36:42 GMT

A SuperWASP search for additional transiting planets in 24 known systems
http://arxiv.org/abs/0906.3414

Three of those 24 systems are WASP-16 through WASP-18, for which they provide orbital inclinations, impact parameters, and radii as a function of the host star.

Pixel-lensing based detection of M31 planets

Sirius_Alpha — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 00:10:29 GMT

Pixel-lensing as a way to detect extrasolar planets in M31 http://arxiv.org/abs/0906.1050 Abstract wrote:We study the possibility to detect extrasolar planets in M31 through pixel-lensing observations. Using a Monte Carlo approach, we select the physical parameters of the binary lens system, a star hosting a planet, and we calculate the pixel-lensing light curve taking into account the finite source effects. Indeed, their inclusion is crucial since the sources in M31 microlensing events are ...

Spitzer Cycle 6 programms

Sirius_Alpha — Thu, 07 May 2009 22:17:33 GMT

Spitzer Cycle 6 approved programs: From http://ssc.spitzer.caltech.edu/geninfo/go/go6-list.txt Exoplanet HAT-P-11b Secondary Transit Observations Cool, spatially resolved substellar and exoplanetary analogues at white dwarfs A Survey for Wide Substellar Companions in the Solar Neighborhood Dynamic atmosphere of the eccentric and massive planet XO-3b WASP-17 - testing the paradigm of pM/pL class planets Lightcurves of two newly discovered ultra-short period planets Detecting the Transits ...

Detection of atmospheres with Rossiter-McLaughlin effect.

Sirius_Alpha — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 01:16:16 GMT

On the possibility of detecting extrasolar planets' atmospheres with the Rossiter-McLaughlin-effect http://arxiv.org/abs/0903.2217 Abstract wrote:The detection of extrasolar planets' atmospheres requires very demanding observations. For planets that can not be spatially separated from their host stars, i.e. the vast majority of planets, the transiting planets are the only ones allowing to probe their atmospheres. This is possible from transmission spectroscopy or from measurements taken during ...

Kepler preparation progress

Sirius_Alpha — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 01:18:12 GMT

From the Kepler website. http://kepler.nasa.gov/about/news.html The News section wrote: July 2008: Complete flight segment comprehensive performance test done, as well as acoustics, vibration, and pyro-shock tests. June 2008: Solar array and reaction wheel assemblies installed May 2008: Photometer integrated with spacecraft bus

A Keck HIRES Doppler Search for Planets Orbiting Metal-Poor Dwarfs

Edasich — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 10:23:07 GMT

Interesting hints in this paper about substellar either low-mass stellar companion around low-metallicity stars from KECK radial velocity survey. A Keck HIRES Doppler Search for Planets Orbiting Metal-Poor Dwarfs. II. On the Frequency of Giant Planets in the Metal-Poor Regime We present an analysis of three years of precision radial velocity measurements of 160 metal-poor stars observed with HIRES on the Keck 1 telescope. We report on variability and long-term velocity trends for each star ...

Detecting Extra-solar Planets with a Bayesian hybrid MCMC Kepler periodogram

Michael Johne — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 08:01:31 GMT

Hi! http://de.arxiv.org/abs/0902.2014 A Bayesian re-analysis of published radial velocity data sets is providing evidence for additional planetary candidates. The nonlinear model fitting is accomplished with a new hybrid Markov chain Monte Carlo (HMCMC) algorithm which incorporates parallel tempering, simulated annealing and genetic crossover operations. Each of these features facilitate the detection of a global minimum in chi^2. By combining all three, the HMCMC greatly increases ...

Detection and Characterization of Planetary Systems with $\mu$as Astrometry

Michael Johne — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 07:57:35 GMT

Hi! http://de.arxiv.org/abs/0902.2063 Astrometry as a technique has so far proved of limited utility when employed as either a follow-up tool or to independently search for planetary mass companions orbiting nearby stars. However, this is bound to change during the next decade. In this review, I start by summarizing past and present efforts to detect planets via milli-arcsecond astrometry. Next, I provide an overview of the variety of technical, statistical, and astrophysical challenges ...

Spitzer aimed at Gliese 876 d and Ups And b.

Sirius_Alpha — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 03:45:28 GMT

In the approved obserservations list in the GO-5 program: (link here, there's a lot of candy in that link, too.) Spitzer Space Telescope - General Observer Proposal #50440 Thermal Emission from the Super-Earth Orbiting GJ 876 Principal Investigator: Drake Deming Institution: NASA's Godddard Space Flight Center Technical Contact: Drake Deming, NASA's Godddard Space Flight Center Co-Investigators: Sara Seager, MIT ...

Will SIM-Lite be able to detect habitable exo-Earths?

Lazarus — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 23:10:53 GMT

A troubling report - have only skimmed through it though, not read it in detail.

Exoplanet observing for amateurs

Lazarus — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 22:45:37 GMT

Just so you know...

Bruce Gary's book (the guy who runs the Amateur Exoplanets Archive)

How CoRoT works

Lazarus — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 11:59:31 GMT

The CoRoT satellite in flight : description and performance

See fig. 30 - the number of detected transits is far larger than the number of confirmed planets (of course many of the non-confirmed transits may be eclipsing binary stars and suchlike).

ETD - Exoplanet Transit Database & TRESCA Database

Michael Johne — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 16:03:53 GMT

Hi! I found new links about transitting exoplanets: ETD - Exoplanet Transit Database & Project TRESCA - TRansiting ExoplanetS and CAndidates. The websites are maintained by the Variable Star and Exoplanet Section of Czech Astronomical Society and contain useful information about transits of known exoplanets. Bye!

Exoplanets in 2008

Sirius_Alpha — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 20:00:58 GMT

2007 was a landmark year in exoplanets with a total of 62 planets. In 2008, just as many were announced (63 were found in 2007 if you wish to count GD 66 b). 2008 Highlights ------ HD 40307 -> First triplet terrestrial planet system around main sequence star, b being the lowest mass RV detection to date (4.2 M_E). HR 8799 -> First imaging of multiple exoplanets in a single system. Fomalhaut -> First visible light image of an exoplanet. HW Virginis -> First system around ...

Planet Quest widget (tells the total exoplanet)

marasama — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 06:10:24 GMT

I guess it falls here.

Here's a widget that tells how many planets have been discovered.
http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/

Orbit determination through transit timing?

Sirius_Alpha — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 01:13:39 GMT

I had an idea, and I'm sure it may sound crazy but hear me out. I think that careful transit timing might enable one to determine the orientation of the orbit without the use of polarized light (as has been done at HD 189733). As a planet is transiting it's star, the planet casts a shadow that sweeps out into space, every few days aligning with Earth. This shadow always exists, as the planet can alway observed to be transiting from somewhere. As the shadow is moving, the time that one location ...

Planet detection via star distortion

Sirius_Alpha — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 01:06:39 GMT

http://arxiv.org/abs/0812.3641

They claim that photometrically observing the distortion of the shape of the star due to a planet's gravitational influence can yield planet detections. They acknowledge that this would be extremely hard, and probably possible only in extreme cases.

Some of the early history of RV planet detection

Lazarus — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 23:22:57 GMT

The First High-Precision Radial Velocity Search for Extra-Solar Planets

Worth a read... got some interesting insights into the early history of using RV to detect planets in the era before the famous detection at 51 Pegasi.

Pan-Planets expectations

Sirius_Alpha — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 01:04:20 GMT

Investigating the potential of the Pan-Planets project using Monte Carlo simulations http://arxiv.org/abs/0812.1559 Abstract wrote:Using Monte Carlo simulations we analyze the potential of the upcoming transit survey Pan-Planets. The analysis covers the simulation of realistic light curves (including the effects of ingress/egress and limb-darkening) with both correlated and uncorrelated noise as well as the application of a box-fitting-least-squares detection algorithm. In this work we show ...

East-Asian Planet Search Network expands

marasama — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 22:58:03 GMT

East-Asian Planet Search Network (EAPSN) expands there search with a site in Turkey.
Their primary targets are around intermediate size stars.
- The aurthor, Mr.Sato helped find HD 17156b.
- The EAPSN found the BD around 11 Coma.

We'll see if they can find anything else.

http://www.global-edge.titech.ac.jp/abst/abst_Sato.pdf

Directly detecting hot Jupiters

Lazarus — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 12:34:42 GMT

Interferometry is amazing - the fact that you can even contemplate a direct detection of a planet that close to the host star is incredible.

IR spectroscopy

Sirius_Alpha — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 23:01:44 GMT

I've been considering the idea of infrared Doppler spectroscopy for some time, and given a sufficiently bright source (or a sufficiently sensitive instrument), what are the odds of detecting exomoons around some of these IR-detected planets? (i.e. 2M1207 b, GQ Lupi b, 1RXS ... b, UScoCTIO 108 b, AB Pic b?) I'm guessing RV signals would be extremely small, but what about jitter? I'm guessing a 5 M_j object probably doesn't have much jitter. Would the ability to detect exomoons be limited only ...

Doppler Spectroscopy informaton.

Sirius_Alpha — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 22:51:39 GMT

Does anyone know where to find a lot of good, high-quality information about Doppler spectroscopy? i.e. if I were making a spectrograph, how would I go about doing it (provided i had the materials)?

Metallicity-biased HARPS search

Lazarus — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 11:30:24 GMT

arXiv: A Metal-biased Planet Search

They've already found something that looks like an eccentric 5-day planet, but still have to confirm that the RV curve is not due to stellar activity.

Finding planets around T Tauri stars

Lazarus — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 12:32:29 GMT

A Young Planet Search in Visible and IR Light: DN Tau, V836 Tau, and V827 Tau Both DN Tau and V836 Tau show radial velocity variations, but it turns out they are caused by starspots. (Similar to the case with TW Hya). Turns out it is quite tricky to confirm planets around these stars: you need to make measurements at different wavelengths to test the starspot hypothesis.

Extragalactic planets

NuclearVacuum — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 16:23:40 GMT

I am curious, could it be possible to look at a star in another galaxy, and see another planet. Take the Andromeda Galaxy for example, stars have been cataloged in this galaxy. Could we pick a sun-like star, search it with Doppler and transit, and could we find a planet?

Astro-comb may boost Radial Velocity resolution 100x

Sirius_Alpha — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 22:12:17 GMT

Relevant news articles. � National Geographic http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080402-planets-comb.html � Centauri-Dreams blog http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=1811 This will greatly boost current Doppler Spectroscopy resolution down to 1 cm2, 100 times greater than what is currently used. This is what is needed to start seriously hunting for Earth-like planets. Red dwarf stars, being rather cool, shouldn't have a lot of jitter, so we may expect a lot of terrestrial ...

Finding planets around asymptotic giant branch stars

Lazarus — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 22:01:02 GMT

arXiv: The modulation of SiO maser polarization by Jovian planets

It might be possible to search for planets around asymptotic giant branch stars by observing changes in the polarisation of SiO masers. The radial velocity method does not work well on these stars because of the extended atmosphere.

I suspect that verifying any objects discovered this way as planets will be quite tricky.

The SPICA Space Telescope

Sirius_Alpha — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 22:48:02 GMT

Using SPICA Space Telescope to characterize Exoplanets http://fr.arxiv.org/abs/0809.0242 Abstract wrote:We present the 3.5m SPICA space telescope, a proposed Japanese-led JAXA-ESA mission scheduled for launch around 2017. The actively cooled (<5 K), single aperture telescope and monolithic mirror will operate from ~3.5 to ~210 um and will provide superb sensitivity in the mid- and far-IR spectral domain (better than JWST at lambda > 18 um). SPICA is one of the few space missions selected ...

Exoplanet characterization with long slit spectroscopy

Sirius_Alpha — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 15:58:46 GMT

Exoplanet characterization with long slit spectroscopy http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.3817 Abstract wrote:Extrasolar planets observation and characterization by high contrast imaging instruments is set to be a very important subject in observational astronomy. Dedicated instruments are being developed to achieve this goal with very high efficiency. In particular, full spectroscopic characterization of low temperature planetary companions is an extremely important milestone. We present a new data ...

Transiting Exoplanets with JWST

Sirius_Alpha — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 00:41:24 GMT

Transiting Exoplanets with JWST http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.1913 abstract wrote:The era of exoplanet characterization is upon us. For a subset of exoplanets -- the transiting planets -- physical properties can be measured, including mass, radius, and atmosphere characteristics. Indeed, measuring the atmospheres of a further subset of transiting planets, the hot Jupiters, is now routine with the Spitzer Space Telescope. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will continue Spitzer's legacy with ...

Search for extrasolar trojans.A Search for Exotrojans in Transiting Exoplanetary systems

Sirius_Alpha — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:17:55 GMT

A Search for Exotrojans in Transiting Exoplanetary systems http://arxiv.org/abs/0807.4570 Abstract wrote:We present a search for Trojan companions to 25 transiting exoplanets. We use the technique of Ford & Gaudi 2006, in which a difference is sought between the observed transit time and the transit time that is calculated by fitting a two-body Keplerian orbit to the radial-velocity data. This technique is sensitive to the imbalance of mass at the L4/L5 points of the planet-star orbit. ...