APF—The Lick Observatory Automated Planet Finder

By S. Vogt, M. Radovan, R. Kibrick, R. P. Butler, B. Alcott, Steven L. Allen, P. Arriagada, M. Bolte, J. Burt, J. Cabak and 38 more. 2014

133 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The Automated Planet Finder (APF) is a facility purpose-built for the discovery and characterization of extrasolar planets through high-cadence Doppler velocimetry of the reflex barycentric accelerations of their host stars. Located atop Mount Hamilton, the APF facility consists of a 2.4 m telescope and its Levy spectrometer, an optical echelle spectrometer optimized for precision Doppler velocimetry. APF features a fixed-format spectral range from 374–970 nm, and delivers a “throughput” (resolution × slit width product) of 114,000″, with spectral resolutions up to 150,000. Overall system efficiency (fraction of photons incident on the primary mirror that are detected by the science CCD) on blaze at 560 nm in planet-hunting mode is 15%. First-light tests on the radial-velocity (RV) standard stars HD 185144 and HD 9407 demonstrate sub-meter-per-second precision (rms per observation) held over a 3 month period. This paper reviews the basic features of the telescope, dome, and spectrometer, and gives a brief summary of first-light performance.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Computational Mechanics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2c1ed216d9e3dbd659ca33829b1b897bc9ec37da

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Andrew W. Howard
2. J. Johnson
3. B. Fulton
4. Timothy Morton
5. D. Charbonneau
6. Jon Fortney
7. E. Petigura
8. G. Marcy

In Computational Mechanics

1. Michael C. Liu
2. C. Lovis
3. Debra A. Fischer
4. Th. Henning
5. F. Pepe
6. T. Barclay
7. Travis S. Barman
8. S. Howell

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. C. Mordasini
2. E. Rivera
3. Debra A. Fischer
4. Gregory Laughlin
5. F. Pepe
6. C. Lovis
7. S. Vogt
8. F. Bouchy

Citations in the corpus

• The LCES HIRES/Keck Precision Radial Velocity Exoplanet Survey (2017, methodology): “The new APF facility’s Levy spectrometer (Vogt et al. 2014b) is very similar in optical design to PFS, but with the advantage of a somewhat higher R∼108,000 resolution.”
• State of the Field: Extreme Precision Radial Velocities (2016, methodology): “The 2.4-m Automated Planet Finder (APF; Radovan et al. 2010; Vogt et al. 2014) is located at Lick Observatory62 and the Levy spectrograph was commissioned at the APF in 2013.”
• A NEARBY M STAR WITH THREE TRANSITING SUPER-EARTHS DISCOVERED BY K2 (2015, methodology): “We obtained high-resolution (2” slit width with the B decker) spectra of K2-3 with the Levy Spectrometer (Radovan et al. 2010) on the Automated Planet Finder (APF) telescope (Vogt et al. 2014).”