A HET search for planets around evolved stars

Abstract

We present our ongoing survey of ~1000 GK-giants with the 9.2-m Hobby-Eberly Telescope in search for planets around evolved stars. The stars selected for this survey are brighter than 11 mag and are located in the section of the HR-diagram, which is approximately delimited by the main sequence, the instability strip, and the coronal dividing line. We use the High Resolution Spectrograph to obtain stellar spectra for radial velocity measurements with a 4-6 m/s precision. So far, the survey has discovered a planetary-mass companion to the K0-giant HD 17092, and it has produced a number of plausible planet candidates around other stars. Together with other similar efforts, our program provides information on planet formation around intermediate mass main sequence-progenitors and it will create the experimental basis with which to study dynamics of planetary systems around evolving stars.

6 pages, to appear in ,,Exoplanets. Detection, Formation & Dynamics'' IAU Symposium 249, Cambridge University Press, 2007

References in corpus (4)

• Retired A Stars and Their Companions: Exoplanets Orbiting Three Intermediate-Mass Subgiants
• Planets around evolved intermediate-mass stars. I. Two substellar companions in the open clusters NGC 2423 and NGC 4349
• Evolved stars hint to an external origin of enhanced metallicity in planet-hosting stars
• A Planetary Mass Companion to the K0 Giant HD 17092