Diversity of the Sub-Stellar Realm

亚恒星领域的多样性

• 批准号: 312092-2013
• 负责人: Jayawardhana, Ray
• 金额: $ 3.79万
• 依托单位: University of Toronto
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2013-01-01 至 2014-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=526386
• 关键词: Diversity; Sub; Stellar; Realm

After millennia of speculation and a century of false starts, astronomers have found hundreds of confirmed planets and thousands more planet candidates around other stars since the mid-1990s. The pace of discovery continues to accelerate, as different (and often complementary) detection techniques mature, and as more capable ground- and space-based instruments come into play. Meanwhile, the past two decades have also witnessed the identification of a new class of astronomical objects called "brown dwarfs", which straddle the boundary between stars and planets. The two types of objects -planets and brown dwarfs- are collectively referred to as sub-stellar objects. I propose an ambitious, multi-faceted research program, using state-of-the-art instruments on several of the world's largest telescopes, to investigate the diversity of sub-stellar objects. Specifically, I propose to (1) characterize close-in transiting planets using data from the Kepler space telescope as well as innovative high-precision observations with ground-based telescopes; (2) search for and characterize sub-stellar companions of nearby young stars through high-contrast, high-angular-resolution imaging and spectroscopy; and (3) identify and characterize the lowest mass isolated brown dwarfs using deep wide-field surveys of nearby young star clusters and follow-up spectroscopy. The proposed work will not only advance our understanding of the origins, evolution and diversity of planets and brown dwarfs, but also contribute to the emerging research area of `comparative exoplanetology'.

经过数千年的猜测和世纪的错误开始，天文学家已经发现了数百个确认的行星和数千个行星候选人自20世纪90年代中期以来围绕其他恒星。随着不同的（而且往往是互补的）探测技术的成熟，以及能力更强的地面和空间仪器的出现，发现的步伐继续加快。与此同时，在过去的二十年里，人们还发现了一类新的天体，称为“褐矮星”，它们横跨在恒星和行星之间。这两种类型的天体-行星和褐矮星-统称为亚恒星天体。我提出了一个雄心勃勃的，多方面的研究计划，使用国家的最先进的仪器在几个世界上最大的望远镜，调查亚恒星物体的多样性。具体而言，我建议（1）使用开普勒太空望远镜的数据以及地面望远镜的创新高精度观测来表征近距离凌日行星;（2）通过高对比度，高角分辨率成像和光谱学来搜索和表征附近年轻恒星的亚恒星同伴;以及（3）利用附近年轻星星团的深宽视场巡天和后续光谱学来识别和表征质量最低的孤立棕矮星。拟议的工作不仅将增进我们对行星和褐矮星的起源、演变和多样性的了解，而且还将促进“比较系外行星学”这一新兴研究领域。