The First High-Precision Radial Velocity Search for Extra-Solar Planets

Abstract

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the introduction of solid-state, signal-generating detectors and absorption cells to impose wavelength fiducials directly on the starlight, the errors in stellar radial velocity (RV) measurements were reduced to the point where Doppler searches for planets became feasible. In 1980 we began to use a hydrogen fluoride gas cell with the CFHT coudé spectrograph and, for 12 years, monitored RVs of some 29 solar-type stars. Since extra-solar planets were expected to resemble Jupiter in both mass and orbit, we were awarded only three or four two-night observing runs each year. In 1988 we highlighted a potential planetary companion to $\gamma$ Cep (K1 IV), in 1993 one to $\beta$ Gem (K0 III), and another to $\epsilon$ Eri (K2 V) in 1992. The putative planets all resembled Jovian systems with periods and masses of 2.5 yr and 1.4 $M_J$, 1.6 yr and 2.6 $M_J$, and 6.9 yr and 0.9 $M_J$, respectively. All three were subsequently confirmed from more extensive data by the Texas group led by Cochran and Hatzes who derived the currently accepted orbital elements. None of the systems is simple and some still question $\epsilon$ Eri b.

23 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Detection Limits from the McDonald Observatory Planet Search Program
• The Extrasolar Planet epsilon Eridani b - Orbit and Mass
• Confirmation of the Planet Hypothesis for the Long-period Radial Velocity Variations of Beta Geminorum
• Direct detection of exoplanet host star companion gamma Cep B and revised masses for both stars and the sub-stellar object
• The Differential Rotation of Kappa1 Ceti as Observed by MOST
• The Planet Host Star Gamma Cephei: Physical Properties, the Binary Orbit, and the Mass of the Substellar Companion

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Multiple mean motion resonances in the HR 8799 planetary system
• A Six-Planet System Orbiting HD 219134
• The conjectured S-type retrograde planet in nu Octantis: more evidence including four years of iodine-cell radial velocities
• Etching glass in the early Universe: Luminous HF and water emission in a QSO-SMG pair at z=4.7
• One of Everything: The Breakthrough Listen Exotica Catalog
• Precise Masses and Orbits for Nine Radial Velocity Exoplanets