TY - GEN
T1 - The Pennsylvania-Torun search for planets around evolved stars with HET
AU - Niedzielski, Andrzej
AU - Wolszczan, Alex
AU - Nowak, Grzegorz
AU - Zielinski, Pawel
AU - Adamow, Monika
AU - Gettel, Sara
N1 - Funding Information:
We acknowledge the financial support from the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education through grants N203 510938 and N203 386237. AW acknowledges support from NASA grant NNX09AB36G. GN is a recipient of a graduate stipend of the Chairman of the Polish Academy of Sciences. We thank the HET resident astronomers and telescope operators for support. The Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) is a joint project of the University of Texas at Austin, the Pennsylvania State University, Stanford University, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, and Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. The HET is named in honor of its principal benefactors, William P. Hobby and Robert E. Eberly. IRAF is distributed by the National Optical Astronomy Observatories and operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under co-operative agreement with the National Science Foundation.
PY - 2010/10
Y1 - 2010/10
N2 - Searches for planets around giants represent an essential complement to 'traditional' surveys, because they furnish information about properties of planetary systems around stars that are the descendants of the A-F main sequence (MS) stars with masses as high as 5M. As the stars evolve off the MS, their effective temperatures and rotation rates decrease to the point that their radial velocity variations can be measured with a few ms 1 precision. This offers an excellent opportunity to improve our understanding of the population of planets around stars that are significantly more massive than the Sun, without which it would be difficult to produce abroad, integrated picture of planet formation and evolution. Since 2001, about 30 such objects have been identified, including our five published HET detections (Niedzielski et al. 2007; Niedzielski et al. 2009a; Niedzielski et al. 2009b). Our work has produced the tightest orbit of a planet orbiting a K-giant identified so far (0.6 AU), and the first convincing evidence for a multiplanet system around such as star (Niedzielski et al. 2009a). Our most recent discoveries (Niedzielski et al. 2009b) have identified new multiplanet systems, including a very intriguing one of two brown dwarf-mass bodies orbiting a 2.8M, K2 giant. This particular detection challenges the standard interpretation of the so-called brown dwarf desert known to exist in the case of solar-mass stars. Along with discoveries supplied by other groups, our work has substantially added to the emerging evidence that stellar mass positively correlates with masses of substellar companions, all the way from red dwarfs to intermediate-mass stars. We present current status and forthcoming results from the Pennsylvania-Torun Search for Planets performed with the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) since 2004.
AB - Searches for planets around giants represent an essential complement to 'traditional' surveys, because they furnish information about properties of planetary systems around stars that are the descendants of the A-F main sequence (MS) stars with masses as high as 5M. As the stars evolve off the MS, their effective temperatures and rotation rates decrease to the point that their radial velocity variations can be measured with a few ms 1 precision. This offers an excellent opportunity to improve our understanding of the population of planets around stars that are significantly more massive than the Sun, without which it would be difficult to produce abroad, integrated picture of planet formation and evolution. Since 2001, about 30 such objects have been identified, including our five published HET detections (Niedzielski et al. 2007; Niedzielski et al. 2009a; Niedzielski et al. 2009b). Our work has produced the tightest orbit of a planet orbiting a K-giant identified so far (0.6 AU), and the first convincing evidence for a multiplanet system around such as star (Niedzielski et al. 2009a). Our most recent discoveries (Niedzielski et al. 2009b) have identified new multiplanet systems, including a very intriguing one of two brown dwarf-mass bodies orbiting a 2.8M, K2 giant. This particular detection challenges the standard interpretation of the so-called brown dwarf desert known to exist in the case of solar-mass stars. Along with discoveries supplied by other groups, our work has substantially added to the emerging evidence that stellar mass positively correlates with masses of substellar companions, all the way from red dwarfs to intermediate-mass stars. We present current status and forthcoming results from the Pennsylvania-Torun Search for Planets performed with the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) since 2004.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84883046412&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84883046412&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1017/S1743921311020734
DO - 10.1017/S1743921311020734
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84883046412
SN - 9780521196529
T3 - Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union
SP - 445
EP - 447
BT - The Astrophysics of Planetary Systems
A2 - Sozzetti, Alessandro
A2 - Lattanzi, Mario
A2 - Boss, Alan
ER -
