Collaborative Research: Hunting for Small Planets with the Automated Planet Finder Telescope

太阳系外行星绕恒星运行的发现吸引了公众的想象力，并引发了对我们最近的行星邻居的搜索。 该团队将使用Lick天文台的自动行星探测器（APF）望远镜在为期三年的类太阳恒星调查中寻找这些“太阳系外”行星。 APF-50巡天计划将发现围绕附近恒星运行的岩石行星，并对它们的质量、轨道形状和大小进行普查。 由此产生的附近行星目录将提供对岩石行星形成和结构的见解，并将为其他团队提供详细的后续测量目标。通过这个项目，PI和他的研究生还将通过HI星星项目指导夏威夷有才华的高中生进行科学展览项目。APF-50巡天是使用2.4米的APF望远镜深入搜索围绕50颗附近明亮的G和K矮星运行的行星。 这种多普勒行星搜索利用了几乎每晚都能进入APF的高观测节奏。 Levy光谱仪的大量精确测量使APF对多普勒信号的敏感性比凯克天文台以前的Eta-Earth巡天小三倍。 新发现的行星将主要是轨道周期为200天或更短的超级地球和次海王星，可能是轨道周期为几天的地球质量行星。 利用APF行星灵敏度的注入回收测试，该团队将绘制出小行星的出现，作为其质量和半长轴的函数。

Discoveries of planets orbiting stars outside our solar system have captivated the public imagination and ignited a search for our nearest planetary neighbors. This team will use the Automated Planet Finder (APF) Telescope at Lick Observatory to hunt for these 'extrasolar' planets in a three-year survey of Sun-like stars. The APF-50 Survey will discover rocky planets orbiting nearby stars and make a census of their masses and orbital shapes and sizes. The resulting catalog of nearby planets will provide insights into the formation and structure of rocky planets and will provide targets for detailed follow-up measurements by other teams. Through this program the PI and his graduate students will also mentor talented high school students in Hawaii on science fair projects through the HI STAR program.The APF-50 Survey is a deep search for planets orbiting fifty nearby, bright G and K dwarf stars using the 2.4-meter APF Telescope. This Doppler planet search exploits the high observational cadence afforded by nearly nightly access to APF. The large number of precise measurements from the Levy Spectrometer make APF sensitive to Doppler signals three times smaller than in the previous Eta-Earth Survey at Keck Observatory. Newly-discovered planets will be mostly super-Earths and sub-Neptunes with orbital periods of 200 days or shorter, and possibly Earth-mass planets with orbital periods of a few days. Using injection-recovery tests of the APF planet sensitivity, the team will map out the occurrence of small planets as a function of their masses and semi-major axes.