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D. A. Fischer (San Francisco State University), G. W. Marcy (U.C. Berkeley), R. P. Butler (Carnegie Institution), S. S. Vogt (U. C. Santa Cruz)
The N2K consortium is carrying out a distributed observing campaign to detect short-period planets using the Keck, Magellan and Subaru telescopes, as well as the automatic photometric telescopes at Fairborn Observatory. We have established a reservoir of more than 14,000 main sequence and subgiant stars, closer than 110 pc, brighter than V=10.5 and with 0.4 < B-V < 1.2. Because the fraction of stars with planets is a sensitive function of stellar metallicity, we are selecting a subset of about 2000 high metallicity stars for this program.
Four short-period planets have been detected in the past year: HD 88133b, HD 149143b, HD 109749b and HD 149026b. Among these new exoplanets, HD 149026b is a transiting planet with a small radius and saturnlike mass. Because the photometric transit depth for this planet was only 3 millimags, models imply a surprising 70 M \earth mass heavy element core. The host star is a bright (V = 8.15) G0IV star, enabling extensive follow-up observations with the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope.
Fischer acknowledges support from NASA grant NNG05G164G.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 37 #4
© 2005. The American Astronomical Soceity.