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HARPS
The High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) is a high-precision echelle planet-finding spectrograph installed in 2002 on the ESO's 3.6m telescope at La Silla Observatory in Chile. The first light was achieved in February 2003. HARPS has discovered over 130 exoplanets to date, with the first one in 2004, making it the most successful planet finder behind the Kepler space observatory. It is a second-generation radial-velocity spectrograph, based on experience with the ELODIE and CORALIE instruments. Characteristics The HARPS can attain a precision of 0.97 m/s (3.5 km/h), making it one of only two instruments worldwide with such accuracy. This is due to a design in which the target star and a reference spectrum from a thorium lamp are observed simultaneously using two identical optic fibre feeds, and to careful attention to mechanical stability: the instrument sits in a vacuum vessel which is temperature-controlled to within 0.01 kelvins. The precisi ...
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HARPS Spectrograph And The 3
The High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) is a high-precision echelle planet-finding spectrograph installed in 2002 on the ESO's 3.6m telescope at La Silla Observatory in Chile. The first light was achieved in February 2003. HARPS has discovered over 130 exoplanets to date, with the first one in 2004, making it the most successful planet finder behind the Kepler space observatory. It is a second-generation radial-velocity spectrograph, based on experience with the ELODIE and CORALIE instruments. Characteristics The HARPS can attain a precision of 0.97 m/s (3.5 km/h), making it one of only two instruments worldwide with such accuracy. This is due to a design in which the target star and a reference spectrum from a thorium lamp are observed simultaneously using two identical optic fibre feeds, and to careful attention to mechanical stability: the instrument sits in a vacuum vessel which is temperature-controlled to within 0.01 kelvins. The precisi ...
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Gliese 581 Planetary System
Gliese 581 () is a red dwarf star of spectral type M3V at the center of the Gliese 581 planetary system, about 20 light years away from Earth in the Libra constellation. Its estimated mass is about a third of that of the Sun, and it is the 89th closest known star to the Sun. Gliese 581 is one of the oldest, least active M dwarfs known. Its low stellar activity improves the likelihood of its planets retaining significant atmospheres, and lessens the sterilizing impact of stellar flares. History of observations Gliese 581 is known at least from 1886, when it was included in Eduard Schönfeld's ''Southern (SD)''—the fourth part of the '. The corresponding designation is BD -7 4003. Characteristics The name ''Gliese 581'' refers to the catalog number from the 1957 survey ''Gliese Catalogue of Nearby Stars'' of 965 stars located within 20 parsecs of the Earth. Other names of this star include ''BD-07° 4003'' ( BD catalogue, first known publication) and ''HO Librae'' (var ...
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Super-Earth
A super-Earth is an extrasolar planet with a mass higher than Earth's, but substantially below those of the Solar System's ice giants, Uranus and Neptune, which are 14.5 and 17 times Earth's, respectively. The term "super-Earth" refers only to the mass of the planet, and so does not imply anything about the surface conditions or habitability. The alternative term "gas dwarfs" may be more accurate for those at the higher end of the mass scale, although "mini-Neptunes" is a more common term. Definition In general, super-Earths are defined by their masses, and the term does not imply temperatures, compositions, orbital properties, habitability, or environments. While sources generally agree on an upper bound of 10 Earth masses (~69% of the mass of Uranus, which is the Solar System's giant planet with the least mass), the lower bound varies from 1 or 1.9 to 5, with various other definitions appearing in the popular media. The term "super-Earth" is also used by astronomers to ...
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ESO 3
The European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere, commonly referred to as the European Southern Observatory (ESO), is an intergovernmental research organisation made up of 16 member states for ground-based astronomy. Created in 1962, ESO has provided astronomers with state-of-the-art research facilities and access to the southern sky. The organisation employs about 730 staff members and receives annual member state contributions of approximately €162 million. Its observatories are located in northern Chile. ESO has built and operated some of the largest and most technologically advanced telescopes. These include the 3.6 m New Technology Telescope, an early pioneer in the use of active optics, and the Very Large Telescope (VLT), which consists of four individual 8.2 m telescopes and four smaller auxiliary telescopes which can all work together or separately. The Atacama Large Millimeter Array observes the universe in the millimetre and s ...
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Michel Mayor
Michel Gustave Édouard Mayor (; born 12 January 1942) is a Swiss astrophysicist and professor emeritus at the University of Geneva's Department of Astronomy. He formally retired in 2007, but remains active as a researcher at the Observatory of Geneva. He is co-laureate of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics along with Jim Peebles and Didier Queloz, and the winner of the 2010 Viktor Ambartsumian International Prize and the 2015 Kyoto Prize. Together with Didier Queloz in 1995, he discovered 51 Pegasi b, the first extrasolar planet orbiting a sun-like star, 51 Pegasi. For this achievement, they were awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star" resulting in “contributions to our understanding of the evolution of the universe and Earth’s place in the cosmos.” Related to the discovery, Mayor noted that humans will never migrate to such exoplanets since they are "much, much too far away ... nd would takehundreds of mill ...
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Didier Queloz
Didier Patrick Queloz (; born 23 February 1966) is a Swiss astronomer. He is the Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, where he is also a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, as well as a professor at the University of Geneva. Together with Michel Mayor in 1995, he discovered 51 Pegasi b, the first extrasolar planet orbiting a sun-like star, 51 Pegasi. For this discovery, he shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics with Mayor and Jim Peebles. In 2021, he was announced as the founding director of the Center for the Origin and Prevalence of Life at ETH Zurich. Early life and education Queloz was born in Switzerland, on 23 February 1966. Queloz studied at the University of Geneva where he subsequently obtained a MSc degree in physics in 1990, a DEA in Astronomy and Astrophysics in 1992, and a PhD degree in 1995 with Swiss astrophysicist Michel Mayor as his doctoral advisor. In the area of religion ''The Daily Telegraph'' reports him as ...
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La Silla Observatory
La Silla Observatory is an astronomical observatory in Chile with three telescopes built and operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO). Several other telescopes are located at the site and are partly maintained by ESO. The observatory is one of the largest in the Southern Hemisphere and was the first in Chile to be used by ESO. The La Silla telescopes and instruments are located 150 km northeast of La Serena at the outskirts of the Chilean Atacama Desert, one of the driest and most remote areas of the world. Like other observatories in this geographical area, La Silla is located far from sources of light pollution and, like the Paranal Observatory, home to the Very Large Telescope, it has one of the darkest night skies on the Earth. History Following the decision in 1963 to approve Chile as the site for the ESO observatory, scouting parties were sent to various locations to assess their suitability. The site that was decided upon was La Silla in the southern pa ...
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Exoplanet
An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside the Solar System. The first possible evidence of an exoplanet was noted in 1917 but was not recognized as such. The first confirmation of detection occurred in 1992. A different planet, initially detected in 1988, was confirmed in 2003. There are many methods of detecting exoplanets. Transit photometry and Doppler spectroscopy have found the most, but these methods suffer from a clear observational bias favoring the detection of planets near the star; thus, 85% of the exoplanets detected are inside the tidal locking zone. In several cases, multiple planets have been observed around a star. About 1 in 5 Sun-like starsFor the purpose of this 1 in 5 statistic, "Sun-like" means G-type star. Data for Sun-like stars was not available so this statistic is an extrapolation from data about K-type stars. have an "Earth-sized"For the purpose of this 1 in 5 statistic, Earth-sized means 1–2 Earth radii. planet in the habitable z ...
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Radial Velocity Method
Doppler spectroscopy (also known as the radial-velocity method, or colloquially, the wobble method) is an indirect method for finding extrasolar planets and brown dwarfs from radial-velocity measurements via observation of Doppler shifts in the spectrum of the planet's parent star. 1,018 extrasolar planets (about 19.5% of the total) have been discovered using Doppler spectroscopy, as of November 2022. History Otto Struve proposed in 1952 the use of powerful spectrographs to detect distant planets. He described how a very large planet, as large as Jupiter, for example, would cause its parent star to wobble slightly as the two objects orbit around their center of mass. He predicted that the small Doppler shifts to the light emitted by the star, caused by its continuously varying radial velocity, would be detectable by the most sensitive spectrographs as tiny redshifts and blueshifts in the star's emission. However, the technology of the time produced radial-velocity me ...
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HD 93083 B
HD 93083 b is an extrasolar planet orbiting the K-type subgiant star HD 93083 in Antlia constellation. It is probably much less massive than Jupiter, although only the minimum mass is known. The planet's mean distance from the star is about half that of Earth, and the orbit is slightly eccentric. This planet is another discovery by the HARPS search team. The planet HD 93083 b is named Melquíades. The name was selected in the NameExoWorlds campaign by Colombia, during the 100th anniversary of the IAU. Melquíades is a fictional character in the novel '' One Hundred Years of Solitude'', who walks around Macondo (name of the host star HD 93083). Stability analysis reveals that the orbits of Earth-sized planets located in HD 93083 b's Trojan points would be stable for long periods of time. See also * High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher The High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) is a high-precision echelle planet-finding spectrograph installed in 200 ...
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Mu Arae C
Mu Arae c, also known as HD 160691 c, formally named Dulcinea (pronounced or ), is an extrasolar planet orbiting the star Mu Arae of the constellation Ara. It was the first 'hot Neptune' or 'mega-Earth' to be discovered. None of the four planets orbiting Mu Arae are directly visible from Earth using currently available tools. All four were found using the radial velocity method of extrasolar planet detection. Discovery The planet's discovery was announced on August 25, 2004. At the time, its minimum mass was reported at just 14 times that of Earth, although later work established a value of 10.5 Earth masses. It orbits very close to Mu Arae, completing one revolution every 9.6 days. The discovery was made with the aid of the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) spectrograph, at the European Southern Observatory's La Silla Observatory in Chile. The data that revealed the presence of this planet was gathered on 8 nights of observations in June 2004. Name In July ...
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Stéphane Udry
Stéphane Udry (born 1961 in Sion, Switzerland) is an astronomer at the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland, whose current work is primarily the search for extra-solar planets. He and his team, in 2007, discovered a possibly terrestrial planet in the habitable zone of the Gliese 581 planetary system, approximately 20 light years away in the constellation Libra. He also led the observational team that discovered HD 85512 b, another most promisingly habitable exoplanet. Career Udry earned a doctorate at the University of Geneva in 1992, and spent two years at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Later, Udry returned to Geneva, and worked with Michel Mayor, the discoverer of 51 Pegasi b, the first extrasolar planet found revolving around a normal star. In 2007, Udry was appointed full professor in the faculty of natural sciences at the University of Geneva. Research Udry's initial research concerned the dynamics of galaxies. His current work chiefly concerns the search for extra ...
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