Detection Limits from the McDonald Observatory Planet Search Program

By R. Wittenmyer, M. Endl, W. Cochran, A. Hatzes, G. Walker, Stephenson L. S. Yang, D. Paulson. 2006

256 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Based on the long-term radial velocity surveys carried out with the McDonald Observatory 2.7 m Harlan J. Smith Telescope from 1988 to the present, we derive upper limits to long-period giant planet companions for 31 nearby stars. Data from three phases of the McDonald Observatory 2.7 m planet-search program have been merged together, and for 17 objects data from the pioneering Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope radial velocity program have also been included in the companion-limits determination. For those 17 objects, the baseline of observations is in excess of 23 yr, enabling the detection or exclusion of giant planets in orbits beyond 8 AU. We also consider the possibility of eccentric orbits in our computations. At an orbital separation of 5.2 AU, we can exclude on average planets of M sin i ≳ MJ (e = 0) and M sin i ≳ MJ (e = 0.6) for 25 of the 31 stars in this survey. However, we are not yet able to rule out "true Jupiters," i.e., planets of M sin i ∼ 1MJ in 5.2 AU orbits. These limits are of interest for the Space Interferometry Mission, Terrestrial Planet Finder, and Darwin missions, which will search for terrestrial planets orbiting nearby stars, many of which are included in this work.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3cdeac2df0ff1877b61c3afb3658a0dd963f474b

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Citations in the corpus

• Radial Velocity Search for Extrasolar Planets in Visual Binary Systems (2009, background): “Wittenmyer et al. (2006) monitored the radial velocity of ADS 14279 A ( 2 Del) during the period of 15 yr.”
• Limits on Planetary Companions from Doppler Surveys of Nearby Stars (2016, background): “Wittenmyer et al. (2006) did not detect companions in their McDonald Observatory Doppler search.”
• The Keck Planet Search: Detectability and the Minimum Mass and Orbital Period Distribution of Extrasolar Planets (2008, background): “Wittenmyer et al. (2006) present limits on companion mass for 31 stars observed at McDonald Observatory.”
• The planet search programme at the ESO CES and HARPS - IV. The search for Jupiter analogues around solar-like stars (2012, methodology): “Combining the LC and VLC data The problem of instrumental offsets, i.e. different radial velocity zero points, occurs when data sets originate from different instruments (e.g. Wittenmyer et al. 2006) or after instrumental changes/upgrades.”