Searching for Rocky Planets with APF

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The newly commissioned 2.4-meter Automated Planet Finding telescope at the LickObservatory will be used to carry out a search for planets around other stars. Thisremotely operated telescope/spectrograph were designed for stability and high cadencesampling which will enable radial velocity precisions well below the current 1 m/s upperlimit. Exoplanets with masses down to 2MEarth in the habitable zones of nearby K-typestars and 10MEarth planets at Earth-like distances around sun-like stars will be detectable.The search will center on 120 F, G, and K-type stars with brightnesses greater than 6.5magnitudes in a V filter. Of particular importance is the survey's sensitivity to low mass(rocky) planets in small orbits whose statistics and properties are important inunderstanding the formation of planetary systems.The project will be carried out by the PI and collaborators along with undergraduate andgraduate students at San Francisco State who will have opportunities to work onexoplanets projects and present these results at talks and in journals.