Exploratory Search for Extrasolar Trojan Planets in Binary Systems

在过去的几年里，在其他恒星周围发现了许多行星。这些发现大多是利用最近发展的高精度光谱技术取得的。文献中还提出了其他方法，这些方法是基于通过行星凌日来探测母恒星的一些光线的日食。研究人员正在对大群恒星进行观察，希望能观测到日食。然而，这取决于一些行星的轨道平面“指向”地球，以及观测系统时发生的日食。在这个项目中，寻找行星将通过选择更可能有行星与地球在其轨道平面上的恒星以及我们可能能够大致预测的日食发生的时间来优化。轨道对齐的优化将通过观察日食双星系统的恒星在轨道平面附近与地球成对运行来实现，正如我们对周期性日食的观测所表明的那样。这个项目的冒险性和探索性在于它的假设，即行星可能有形成并停留在实际恒星轨道上的特定稳定点的趋势，如果没有其他天体的干扰，它们可能会停留在那里。这导致了相对于恒星日食时间的可预测的行星日食时间。虽然受限三体问题的理论随着特洛伊小行星的显著发现而得到证实，但在其他恒星系统中还没有这种类型的例子存在。许多双星的日食将被系统地监测，以寻找由于系统中“特洛伊行星”的凌日而引起的微妙的日食。测量结果将通过对每个系统在同一轨道阶段的多次观测获得，并且将对所有观测的数据进行平均，以减少观测噪声。最初的实验表明，应该有可能探测到由比木星大的行星引起的亮度的毫级变化。通过观察仙后座V442获得的数据的早期结果暗示了探测到的可能性。所使用的设施和设备是由美国国家科学基金会先前的资助获得的。该项目将由本科生和研究生参与数据的获取、分析和发布。这是美国国家科学基金会在阿巴拉契亚州立大学暗天天文台天文学项目中支持的第一个主要研究项目。该项目由天文科学学部资助

AST-0089248CatonIn the last few years a number of planets have been discovered around other stars. Most of these discoveries have been made using recently developed high precision spectroscopic techniques. Other methods, based on detecting eclipses of some of the light of the parent stars by transits of a planet, have been suggested in the literature. Studies are under way to look at large groups of stars with the hope of observing an eclipse. However, this depends on some of the planets having their orbital plane "pointed" at the Earth and the eclipse occurring when the system is being observed.In this project, the search for planets will be optimized by choosing stars more likely to have planets with the Earth in their orbital plane and with eclipses that occur at times that we may be able to approximately predict. The optimization of the orbital alignment will be achieved by looking at eclipsing binary system stars orbiting in pairs with the Earth close to the orbital plane, as indicated by our observations of periodic eclipses.The risky, exploratory nature of this project is the supposition that the planets may have a tendency to form and stay at special points of stability in the actual stellar orbits where, if there are no other perturbing bodies, they may remain. This leads to predictable planetary eclipse times with respect to the stellar eclipse times. While the theory of the restricted three-body problem was verified with the remarkable discovery of the Trojan asteroids, no examples of this type in other star systems are yet known to exist.A number of eclipsing binary stars will be systematically monitored to search for subtle eclipses of the light due to transits of "Trojan planets" in the system. Measurements will be obtained from observations of several passes across the same orbital phase for each system, and the data will be averaged from all the observations to reduce the observational noise. Initial experiments have shown that it should be possible to detect millimagnitude changes in brightness caused by planets larger than Jupiter. Early results in the data obtained by observing V442 Cassiopeia hint at the possibility of a detection.The facilities and equipment to be used were obtained by previous funding from the National Science Foundation. The project will involve undergraduate and graduate students in the acquisition, analysis, and publication of the data. This is the first major NSF supported research project in the astronomy program at the Appalachian State University's Dark Sky Observatory.This project is funded by the Division of Astronomical Sciences.***