HARPS-N

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HARPS-N, the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher for the Northern hemisphere is a high-precision radial-velocity spectrograph, installed at the Italian Telescopio Nazionale Galileo, a 3.58-metre telescope located at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on the island of La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain.

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HARPS-N is the counterpart for the Northern Hemisphere of the similar HARPS instrument installed on the ESO 3.6 m Telescope at La Silla Observatory in Chile. [1] It allows for planetary research in the northern sky which hosts the Cygnus and Lyra constellations. In particular it allows for detailed follow up research to Kepler mission planet candidates, which are located in the Cygnus constellation region.

The instrument's main scientific goals are the discovery and characterization of terrestrial super-Earths by combining the measurements using transit photometry and doppler spectroscopy which provide both, the size and mass of the exoplanet. Based on the resulting density, rocky (terrestrial) Super-Earths can be distinguished from gaseous exoplanets. [2]

The HARPS-N Project is a collaboration between the Geneva Observatory (lead), the Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge (Massachusetts), the Universities of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, the Queen's University Belfast, the UK Astronomy Technology Centre and the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica.

First light on sky

First light on sky was obtained by HARPS-N on March 27, 2012 and official operations started on August 1, 2012. [3]

See also

Related Research Articles

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The High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) is a high-precision echelle planet-finding spectrograph installed in 2002 on the ESO's 3.6m telescope at La Silla Observatory in Chile. The first light was achieved in February 2003. HARPS has discovered over 130 exoplanets to date, with the first one in 2004, making it the most successful planet finder behind the Kepler space observatory. It is a second-generation radial-velocity spectrograph, based on experience with the ELODIE and CORALIE instruments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Methods of detecting exoplanets</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">WASP-4b</span> Extrasolar planet in the constellation Phoenix

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kepler-7b</span> Hot Jupiter orbiting Kepler-7

Kepler-7b is one of the first five exoplanets to be confirmed by NASA's Kepler spacecraft, and was confirmed in the first 33.5 days of Kepler's science operations. It orbits a star slightly hotter and significantly larger than the Sun that is expected to soon reach the end of the main sequence. Kepler-7b is a hot Jupiter that is about half the mass of Jupiter, but is nearly 1.5 times its size; at the time of its discovery, Kepler-7b was the second most diffuse planet known, surpassed only by WASP-17b. It orbits its host star every five days at a distance of approximately 0,06 AU. Kepler-7b was announced at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society on January 4, 2010. It is the first extrasolar planet to have a crude map of cloud coverage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kepler-8b</span> Extrasolar planet

Kepler-8b is the fifth of the first five exoplanets discovered by NASA's Kepler spacecraft, which aims to discover planets in a region of the sky between the constellations Lyra and Cygnus that transit their host stars. The planet is the hottest of the five. Kepler-8b was the only planet discovered in Kepler-8's orbit, and is larger than Jupiter. It orbits its host star every 3.5 days. The planet also demonstrates the Rossiter–McLaughlin effect, where the planet's orbit affects the redshifting of the spectrum of the host star. Kepler-8b was announced to the public on January 4, 2010 at a conference in Washington, D.C. after radial velocity measurements conducted at the W.M. Keck Observatory confirmed its detection by Kepler.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Discoveries of exoplanets</span> Detecting planets located outside the Solar System

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kepler-10b</span> Terrestrial exoplanet orbiting Kepler-10

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kepler-10</span> Sunlike star in the constellation Draco

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Kepler-22 is a sun-like star in the northern constellation of Cygnus, the swan, that is orbited by a planet found to be unequivocally within the star's habitable zone. It is located at the celestial coordinates: Right Ascension 19h 16m 52.2s, Declination +47° 53′ 4.2″. With an apparent visual magnitude of 11.7, this star is too faint to be seen with the naked eye. It can be viewed with a telescope having an aperture of at least 4 in (10 cm). The estimated distance to Kepler-22 is 638 light-years.

Kepler-29 is a Sun-like star in the northern constellation of Cygnus. It is located at the celestial coordinates: Right Ascension 19h 53m 23.6020s, Declination +47° 29′ 28.436″. With an apparent visual magnitude of 15.456, this star is too faint to be seen with the naked eye. It is a solar analog, having a close mass, radius, and temperature as the Sun. Currently the age of the star has not been determined due to its 2780 light-year distance. As of 2016 no Jovian exoplanets of 0.9–1.4 MJ have been found at a distance of 5 AU.

Kepler-44, formerly known as KOI-204, is a star in the northern constellation of Cygnus. It is located at the celestial coordinates: Right Ascension 20h 00m 24.564s, Declination +45° 45′ 43.71″. With an apparent visual magnitude of 16, this star is too faint to be seen with the naked eye.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Next-Generation Transit Survey</span> Ground-based robotic search for exoplanets

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Miniature Exoplanet Radial Velocity Array</span>

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Kepler-1625 is a 14th-magnitude solar-mass star located in the constellation of Cygnus approximately 8,000 light years away. Its mass is within 5% of that of the Sun, but its radius is approximately 70% larger reflecting its more evolved state. A candidate gas giant exoplanet was detected by the Kepler Mission around the star in 2015, which was later validated as a likely real planet to >99% confidence in 2016. In 2018, the Hunt for Exomoons with Kepler project reported that this exoplanet has evidence for a Neptune-sized exomoon around it, based on observations from NASA’s Kepler Mission. Subsequent observations by the larger Hubble Space Telescope provided compounding evidence for a Neptune-sized satellite, with an on-going debate about the reality of this exomoon candidate.

GJ 9827 is a star in the constellation of Pisces. It is a K-type main-sequence star with an apparent magnitude of 10.250. It is 97 light-years away, based on parallax.

KELT-6, also known as BD+31 2447, is a star in the constellation Coma Berenices. With an apparent magnitude of 10.34, it is impossible to see with the unaided eye, but can be seen with a powerful telescope. The star is located 791 light years away from the Solar System based on parallax, but is drifting away with a radial velocity of 1.62 km/s.

References

  1. Cosentino, Rosario; Lovis, Christophe; Pepe, Francesco; Collier Cameron, Andrew; Latham, David W.; Molinari, Emilio; Udry, Stephane; Bezawada, Naidu; Black, Martin; Born, Andy; Buchschacher, Nicolas; Charbonneau, Dave; Figueira, Pedro; Fleury, Michel; Galli, Alberto; Gallie, Angus; Gao, Xiaofeng; Ghedina, Adriano; Gonzalez, Carlos; Gonzalez, Manuel; Guerra, Jose; Henry, David; Horne, Keith; Hughes, Ian; Kelly, Dennis; Lodi, Marcello; Lunney, David; Maire, Charles; Mayor, Michel; et al. (2012). "Harps-N: the new planet hunter at TNG". In McLean, Ian S; Ramsay, Suzanne K; Takami, Hideki (eds.). Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy IV. Vol. 8446. pp. 84461V. Bibcode:2012SPIE.8446E..1VC. doi:10.1117/12.925738. S2CID   125379344. Cosentino et al. 2012, Proceedings of the SPIE, Volume 8446, article id. 84461V
  2. Latham, David W.; HARPS-N Collaboration (2013). "HARPS-N: A New Tool for Characterizing Kepler Planets". American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #221. 221: 231.02. Bibcode:2013AAS...22123102L. Latham et al. 2013, American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #221, #231.02
  3. https://plone2.unige.ch/HARPS-N/news/official-operations-starting-on-august-1st-2012 Official operations starting on August 1st, 2012