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Part of the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in Arizona
The MEarth Project (pronounced mirth
[1] ) is a United States
NSF -funded
[2] robotic
exoplanet observatory that is part of the
Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory on
Mount Hopkins . The project monitors the brightness of thousands of
red dwarf stars with the goal of finding
transiting planets . As red dwarf stars are small, any transiting planet blocks a larger proportion of starlight than transits around a Sun-like star would, allowing smaller planets to be detected through ground-based observations.
[3]
Equipment
The original MEarth-North
[4] observatory on Mount Hopkins consists of eight
RC Optical Systems 40 cm (16 in) f / 9
Ritchey-Chrétien telescopes equipped with 2048 × 2048 Apogee U42 CCDs, infrared filters, and
equatorial mounts .
[5]
It began observations in January 2008.
[3]
In 2014, the MEarth-South observatory began operations
[6] from the
Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory site east of
La Serena, Chile , extending MEarth's coverage to the
southern celestial hemisphere using a nearly-identical eight-telescope array.
[4] Unlike MEarth-North, the telescopes in Chile are also sensitive to red light.
[4]
Planets discovered
References
^
"The MEarth Project: Searching for Habitable Exoplanets around Nearby Small Stars" .
^
"Award Abstract # 1616624: The MEarth Project: An All Sky Survey of the Closest Low-mass Stars to Uncover the Very Best Terrestrial Exoplanets for Further Study" .
^
a
b Irwin, Jonathan; Charbonneau, David; Nutzman, Philip; Falco, Emilio (2008-05-01).
"The MEarth project: searching for transiting habitable super-Earths around nearby M dwarfs" . Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union . 4 (Symposium S253): 37–43.
arXiv :
0807.1316 .
doi :
10.1017/S1743921308026215 .
^
a
b
c
"The MEarth Project: Telescopes" .
^ Berta, Zachory; Irwin, Jonathan; Charbonneau, David; Burke, Christopher; Falco, Emilio (2012-10-11).
"TRANSIT DETECTION IN THE MEarth SURVEY OF NEARBY M DWARFS: BRIDGING THE CLEAN-FIRST, SEARCH-LATER DIVIDE" . The Astronomical Journal . 144 (5): 145.
arXiv :
1206.4715 .
doi :
10.1088/0004-6256/144/5/145 .
^ Newton, Elisabeth; Mondrik, Nicholas; Irwin, Jonathan; Winters, Jennifer; Charbonneau, David (2018-10-18).
"New Rotation Period Measurements for M Dwarfs in the Southern Hemisphere: An Abundance of Slowly Rotating, Fully Convective Stars" . The Astronomical Journal . 156 (5): 217.
arXiv :
1807.09365 .
doi :
10.3847/1538-3881/aad73b .
^
"Welcome to LHS 1140b: A Super-Earth in the Habitable Zone" . 2017-04-20.
External links
Ground-based Space missions
Past Current Planned Proposed Cancelled
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