| MEarth: | looking for transiting, habitable super-Earths around small stars |
| MEarth has discovered a super-Earth transiting a nearby low-mass star! | |
We are pleased to announce the discovery of GJ 1214b, the first nearby transiting super-Earth exoplanet! GJ 1214b is a 2.7 Earth radius, 6.6 Earth mass exoplanet that transits its very small, very cool parent star once every 1.6 days. With a predicted temperature of 200 degrees Celsius, GJ1214b is warmer than Earth, but considerably cooler than most other known transiting exoplanets. This newly discovered planetary system is located a mere 40 lightyears away. |
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| The MEarth Project is a survey to photometrically monitor 2000 nearby, small stars (called M dwarfs), looking for periodic dips in light, due to the presence of habitable super-Earth exoplanets transiting in front of the star. In particular, MEarth is looking for a planet located at the right distance from its star to have a temperature right for liquid water, in what is often called the "habitable zone." Because M dwarfs emit much less light energy than our star, a habitable zone planet around an M dwarf would be much closer to its host star than the Earth is to the Sun. This means that compared to the Earth-Sun system, such a planet around an M dwarf is more likely to be in an orbit aligned with our line of sight and more likely to transit. Moreover, a habitable zone planet around an M dwarf would have a mere two week orbit, compared to the Earth's one year orbit. And by looking at small stars, we can detect smaller planets - as small as twice the radius of the Earth. Such a "super-Earth" could have a liquid or solid surface; if it is in its star's habitable zone, it might even be able to support life! The case for M dwarfs as exoplanet hosts is outlined in a recent paper by Nutzman & Charbonneau. | |
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The MEarth Observatory consists of eight, robotically controlled, 40 cm telescopes located in a roll-top enclosure (lower-left quadrant of photo) at the F. L. Whipple Observatory on Mt. Hopkins, AZ. The MEarth team comprises:David Charbonneau (PI) Jonathan Irwin Chris Burke Philip Nutzman Zach Berta Emilio Falco Lauren Weiss |
Each of the eight identical MEarth telescopes is a 16" f/9 Ritchey-Chretien on a German Equatorial mount. Each detector is a thinned 2048 x 2048 CCD's with a plate scale of 0.76 arcseconds/pixel with a custom filter that lets in light at wavelengths longer than 715 nm. At right are images of a single MEarth telescope, along with graduate student Philip Nutzman. |
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| We record nightly time-lapse movies of the telescopes in action. Please click the images above to see some typical nights at the MEarth Observatory (requires Quicktime). We have two normal webcams (left and center), each looking at four of the eight telescopes, and one fisheye camera (right) that captures all eight (look closely!) of the MEarth telescopes at once. | |
Running a remote observatory in the wilderness of Arizona, we have encountered a few hazards. For instance, the curious ring-tailed cat (Bassariscus astutus) seems to enjoy crawling on the primary mirrors of our telescopes. |
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| Please click on any image for a higher resolution version. Any comments regarding problems with this website should be directed to Zach Berta.The MEarth Project gratefully acknowledges funding from the David and Lucile Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering and the National Science Foundation. | |