The team responsible for building the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS), the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) 3.6-metre telescope’s spectrograph, has reported the discovery of 32 new exoplanets. This discovery increases the number of low-mass planets found by 30%. HARPS brings its total of discovered exoplanets to over 75 of the total 400 known.
Stéphane Udry, the team’s spokesperson, described their work: “HARPS is a unique, extremely high precision instrument that is ideal for discovering alien worlds. We have now completed our initial five-year programme, which has succeeded well beyond our expectations”.
HARPS’s over 75 discovered exoplanets were from 30 different planetary systems. The spectrograph’s precision has made hunting for small planets–those with masses just a few times of the Earth’s, known as super-Earths–relatively easier. HARPS has spotted 24 of the 28 planets less than 20 times heavier than Earth. Like the previously discovered super-Earths, a majority of the new prospective low-mass planets belong to multi-planet systems that are composed of five planets each, at most.
The ESO called for the building of a very precise spectrograph for its 3.6-metre telescope in La Silla, Chile. The Geneva Observatory’s Michel Mayor led the consortium that built the HARPS. They installed the spectrograph in 2003, which soon after started to detect the radial velocity of stars, therefore measuring their back-and-forward motions. The HARPS can detect radial velocities as slow as 3.5km/hour. The precision of the radial velocity method has made it the most effective way of finding exoplanets.
Stéphane Udry, the team’s spokesperson, described their work: “HARPS is a unique, extremely high precision instrument that is ideal for discovering alien worlds. We have now completed our initial five-year programme, which has succeeded well beyond our expectations”.
HARPS’s over 75 discovered exoplanets were from 30 different planetary systems. The spectrograph’s precision has made hunting for small planets–those with masses just a few times of the Earth’s, known as super-Earths–relatively easier. HARPS has spotted 24 of the 28 planets less than 20 times heavier than Earth. Like the previously discovered super-Earths, a majority of the new prospective low-mass planets belong to multi-planet systems that are composed of five planets each, at most.
The ESO called for the building of a very precise spectrograph for its 3.6-metre telescope in La Silla, Chile. The Geneva Observatory’s Michel Mayor led the consortium that built the HARPS. They installed the spectrograph in 2003, which soon after started to detect the radial velocity of stars, therefore measuring their back-and-forward motions. The HARPS can detect radial velocities as slow as 3.5km/hour. The precision of the radial velocity method has made it the most effective way of finding exoplanets.
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