Previous | Session 117 | Next | Author Index | Block Schedule
C. McCarthy, D. A. Fischer, K. L. Tah (San Francisco State Univ.), J. Johnson, G. Marcy (U.C. Berkeley)
NASA's Space Interferometry Mission (SIM/PlanetQuest) will return unprecedented astrometric precision approaching one microarcsecond, enabling the detection of planets with masses few times the mass of the Earth around the nearest stars. About 200 nearby stars will be searched for planets by 2 research teams. To achieve such precision in narrow angle mode, SIM requires an exquisitely stable reference frame, established by distant background stars, each within 1 degree of the given target star being searched for planets. As SIM/PlanetQuest prepares for launch in 2012, ground-based work is underway to identify a set of optimal reference stars for each target star, and to remove astrometric variables from the list. We report results of our ongoing doppler survey at Keck Observatory.
If you would like more information about this abstract, please follow the link to exoplanets.org. This link was provided by the author. When you follow it, you will leave the Web site for this meeting; to return, you should use the Back comand on your browser.
Previous | Session 117 | Next
Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 37 #4
© 2005. The American Astronomical Soceity.