Dr. Steven Vogt will continue a long-term effort to discover and characterize planets around nearby stars. He and his group will obtain high-resolution spectra at the W. M. Keck Observatory, the Anglo-Australian Telescope, and the Magellan Telescopes of the Carnegie Observatories to measure precise radial velocities. The study will reveal the presence of unseen planets around stars by detecting periodic variations in the radial velocity of the host star due to gravitational acceleration induced by the unseen planet. The goal of the project is to identify new planets in multi-planet systems and also around stars not yet known to harbor planets. In cases where a planet also transits its host star, infrared and optical light curves of the primary and secondary transits will yield further information about mass, density, structure, temperature, and atmospheric conditions on the planet. The long-term goal of the research is to push the planet detection threshold into the terrestrial-mass regime, and determine the occurrence frequency of habitable terrestrial planets.
This effort aims to provide fundamental observational data about the origins and evolution of planetary systems, and determine whether our own solar system (with low-mass rocky planets in the inner zone, and massive Jovian gas giants in the outer zone) is common or rare in the universe. Dr. Vogt's group will continue outreach efforts with K-12 students and the general population; they will also work with amateur and professional astronomers, who can perform orbit determination using a web-based tool.
