Search for Extra-Solar Planets George Lebo 16 November 2012 AST

Eclipsing (Transiting) Binary Light Curve

Kepler Spacecraft – 2009 Earth Trailing Orbit

Kepler ExoPlanets

Solar Coronagraph

Vortex Coronagraph

Direct Imaging Using a Vortex Coronagraph - HR8799

Beta Pictoris (Very Young Star) Imaging With a Coronagraph

Animation URL

Planets Around Other Stars None known prior to 1992 (!) In 1992, Alex Wolczan discovered 2 (now 3) planets around a neutron star But those seemed weird Probably supernova leftover bits In 1995, Michel Mayor & Didier Queloz discover a planet around 51 Pegasi – how? 11

Kepler’s Laws Kepler described 3 “laws” of planetary motion (for our solar system) Kepler did not have a physical basis for the laws (i.e. Newton’s laws of motion) He just found patterns in the motions of planets and used them to develop 3 guidelines that provided a good matching description Newton later used his physical laws of motion to show WHY Kepler’s rules for planet motion worked 12

Kepler’s First Law Planet orbits are ELLIPSES (what’s that?) The sun/star is at one “focus” of the ellipse Both the planet and the star orbit the center of mass The distance from the center to the focus is c=ae where e is the “eccentricity” Circles are ellipses with eccentricity=0 (both foci at center) 13

Kepler’s Second Law Planet motion sweeps out equal areas of the ellipse in equal time Meaning … planet moves faster when it is closer to the star and slower when it is farther away 14

Kepler’s Third Law a 3 /P 2 = M tot a = semi-major axis of the ellipse (AU) P = period of the orbit (years) M tot = total mass of the system (solar masses) 15

Orbital Reflex Motion For a star/planet system, the planet does most of the moving Its low mass means it is farthest from the center of mass Same period, larger distance means higher velocity (what is it for Earth? For Jupiter?) But you can’t see it (too faint) Star moves VERY little High mass, means small distance from COM (what is it for Sun/Earth? Sun/Jupiter?) But we can SEE the star! 16

Barycenter (Center of Mass) of the Solar System

Radial Velocity Planet Searches So … need a speedometer to measure star velocity versus time To a precision of a few meters per second! Across distances of many light years!!! 18 How? Doppler shift of spectral lines

Radial Velocity Planet Searches How-to, with movie method.swfhttp://static.howstuffworks.com/flash/planet-hunting-rad- method.swf Take a spectrum with a big telescope and very precise (and STABLE) spectrograph 19

Radial Velocity: Information Jupiter has biggest reflex velocity effect on the Sun but this velocity is still small period is long 20 Information we get Period (how?) Orbit distance (how?) Eccentricity Planet mass (note uncertainty!) Really planet MINIMUM mass!

51 Pegasi In 1995, Mayor & Queloz announce the discovery of an orbital signature with amplitude = 50 m/s in a day period around star 51 Pegasi Mass = 0.5 M JUP  First extra-solar planet 21

51 Pegasi: Sky View 22

51 Pegasi: Hot Jupiter? 51 Peg period indicates a VERY small orbital radius (P = 4.2 days, a = 0.05 AU) 23

51 Pegasi: Hot Jupiter? At that location, expected temperature is VERY high (about 2000K or higher!) So … Jupiter-like planet, but closer than Mercury  “Hot Jupiter” How do you make something like that???? 24

Planet Bonanza Geoff Marcy & Paul Butler quickly confirmed 51 Pegasi They had lots of archival data from searches for Jupiter-type planets (periods >10 years, so they were still “in progress”) No one even thought to look for short-period MASSIVE planets (why would they be easier?) Found many “Hot Jupiters” – most extra-solar planets known today are Hot Jupters “MARVELS” (Multi-object Apache Point Observatory Radial Velocity Exoplanet Large-area Survey) is the UF’s program launched in 2008 that promises to be one of the most prolific of all exoplanet hunting programs. 25

ES-Planet Population As of November 14, 2012, there are 850 known extrasolar planets(!!) and 611 extrasolar planetary systems. All of this has happened in about 20 years – someone currently finds a new planet every couple of weeks or less These planets are NOT generally like our Solar System objects – WHY? Next time: properties of Extra-Solar Planets and implications for Life in the Universe 26