LSW Groups
LSW Exoplanets
PRIMA Astrometry:
ResearchMembers
Publications
Radial Velocities:
ResearchMembers
Publications Open Positions
Extrasolar Planet Research at the LSW |
Details about the Work of the PRIMA Group at LSW
PAOS Software
The contribution of the LSW mainly consists in designing and writing the software package
which will enable microarcsecond astrometry with PRIMA. This is by no means an easy task;
an astrometric accuracy of 10 microarcsecond is very challenging (two orders of magnitude
better than Hipparcos!), and a lot of subtle effects in the instrument have to be
taken into account. Some trends will only become apparent after a lot of data have been
taken, so it is expected that the astrometric accuracy will increase over time.
Since the astrometric software is tightly linked to the way certain error terms are handled, the PRIMA group at LSW is also responsible for tasks related to the astrometric error budget and the observation and calibration strategy.
ESPRI Science Project
The consortium plans to carry out an astrometric search for extrasolar planets orbiting
other stars using its guaranteed PRIMA time which it receives in return for its contribution.
Currently, we plan to observe three different target star groups: nearby stars, young stars
and stars around which an extrasolar planet has been detected already with the radial velocity
method.
Astrometric observations require quite careful planning because an astrometric reference star in the immediate vicinity of the target star (angular separation 10-30 arcsec) is needed against which the target star is measured. We have started to carry out preparatory observations (photometry and spectroscopy) to identify suitable astrometric reference stars around our candidate target stars.
Links
- PRIMA project homepage in Geneva, including documentation archive (restricted access)
- PRIMA pages at MPIA Heidelberg
- PRIMA pages at ESO
- Paranal homepage
Meetings & Milestones
|