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Planet hunting |
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The PRIMA facility at the VLTI will enable us to carry out an exciting program
on the astrophysics of extrasolar planets through precise astrometry of the
host stars.
This detection technique measures two components (right ascension
and declination) of the stellar reflex motion with an accuracy of 10-20
microarcsec.
(more...)
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The CONICA Spectral Differential Imager (SDI) upgrade is a 4-channel
imager, observing simultaneously in three distinct wavelength bands
between 1.56 micron and 1.64 micron. CONICA SDI is taylored towards the
detection of T- and Y-class companions to nearby young stars, and is
capable of reaching brightness contrasts of δH = 10.36 mag for a T6
object at 5-σ in 10-25 minutes at a separation of 0.5" from the
target star. |
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SERAM (Search for Exoplanets with Radial velocity at MPIA) is a planet
search program by using a Doppler-spectroscopy method. The goal of this
survey is to study the evolution of planetary systems, from the young
(early phase) until the later star-planet evolutionary stage. In SERAM, a
systematic radial-velocity monitoring has been carried out since 2003 for
young stars and red giants. Recently, the sample has been extended to
horizontal branch stars and white dwarfs.
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The Large Area Imager for the Wise Observatory - LAIWO is an optical
camera with 4 CCDs 4Kx4K pixels, currently beeing built here at the
Max-Planck-Institut fuer Astronomie, Heidelberg. The camera will be
mounted on the 1-m telescope in the Wise Observatory in the Negev desert,
Israel. The field of view will be one square degree with a 0.7''
resolution.
LAIWO will be used for photometric detection of transiting
extra-solar Jupiter-size planets (more...).
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SPHERE is a project to directly image extra-solar planets on a VLT unit
telescope (UT) on ESO's Paranal observatory. This ambitious goal will be
achieved by constructing an instrument that offers a unique combination
of eXtreme Adaptive Optics (XAO), coronography, and three differential
imaging-capable focal plane instruments.
The instrument will be operated in survey mode and spent about 500
nights searching the sky for nearby exo-planets of Jupiter-size and at
ages ranging from a few million years to some gigayears.
(more...)
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