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

该项目将为地球设施的继续运行提供资金，该设施由亚利桑那州的8台40厘米光学望远镜组成，并为智利的另一组8台相同的望远镜扩展该项目，以便提供北半球和南半球的天空覆盖。这些望远镜将用于完成一项为期3年的全天巡天，在距离地球最近的3500颗晚m矮星的可居住区内寻找地球大小的行星。选择m矮星而不是太阳型恒星，因为它们的温度更低，半径更小，质量更低，因此更容易探测到凌日行星，所需的观测时间更少。资助研究生、本科生、博士后1名参与研究。除了寻找适合居住的行星外，该项目还将产生有关低质量食双星、凌日褐矮星和完全对流恒星的自旋下降率特征的有用数据。

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.