A Survey of Nearby Stars for Extrasolar Planets: Towards a Galactic Census of Terrestrial Planets

史蒂文·沃格特博士将继续长期努力，发现并描述附近恒星周围的行星。他和他的团队将在凯克天文台、英澳望远镜和卡内基天文台的麦哲伦望远镜上获得高分辨率光谱，以测量精确的径向速度。这项研究将通过探测由看不见的行星引起的引力加速度引起的主恒星径向速度的周期性变化，揭示恒星周围看不见的行星的存在。该项目的目标是在多行星系统中识别新行星，以及在尚未发现有行星的恒星周围识别新行星。如果一颗行星也凌日它的主星，主星和次星凌日的红外和光学曲线将提供有关该行星质量、密度、结构、温度和大气条件的进一步信息。该研究的长期目标是将行星探测阈值推至类地质量范围，并确定可居住类地行星的出现频率。这项工作旨在提供关于行星系统起源和演化的基本观测数据，并确定我们自己的太阳系（内区有低质量的岩石行星，外区有大质量的类木气体巨星）在宇宙中是常见的还是罕见的。沃格特博士的团队将继续在K-12学生和普通民众中开展推广工作；他们还将与业余和专业天文学家合作，他们可以使用基于网络的工具进行轨道确定。

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.