The MEarth Project: An All-sky Transit Search for Rocky Planets in the Habitable Zones of Low-mass Stars

该项目将为MEARTH设施的继续运营提供资金，该设施由亚利桑那州的8个40厘米光学望远镜组成，并在智利扩展另一个由8个相同的望远镜组成的阵列，以提供北半球和南半球的天空覆盖。该望远镜将用于完成一项为期3年的全天观测，在最近的3500颗晚期M-矮星的宜居带中寻找地球大小的行星。之所以选择M矮星而不是太阳类型的恒星，是因为它们的温度更低，半径更小，质量更小，因此更容易探测到凌日行星，所需的观测时间更少。研究生和本科生，以及一名博士后研究将被资助参与研究。除了搜索宜居行星外，该项目还将产生关于低质量食双星、凌日棕矮星和全对流恒星自旋减速率的有用数据。

This project will provide funds to continue operations of the MEarth facility, which consists of eight 40cm optical telescopes in Arizona, and to expand the project with another array of eight identical telescopes in Chile in order to provide both northern and southern hemisphere sky coverage. The telescopes will be used to complete a 3-year all-sky survey to search for Earth-sized planets in the habitable-zones of the 3500 nearest late M-dwarf stars. M-dwarf stars are selected instead of solar-type stars, because their cooler temperatures, smaller radii, and lower masses will all lead to easier detections of transiting planets with less observing time required. Graduate and undergraduate students, and a postdoctoral research will be funded to participate in the research. In addition to searching for habitable planets, the project will produce useful data on low-mass eclipsing binary stars, transiting brown dwarfs and the characterization of the spin-down rate of fully convective stars.