Red Optical Planet Survey: A radial velocity search for low mass M dwarf planets

¹ Centre for Astrophysics Research, Univ. of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK
² Departamento de Astronomía, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile
³ Dept. of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago, Chile
⁴ Vatican Observatory, V00120 Vatican City State, Italy
⁵ University of Turku, Tuorla Observatory, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Piikkiö, Finland
⁶ Institut für Astrophysik, Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, Germany

^a e-mail: j.r.barnes@herts.ac.uk

Abstract

We present radial velocity results from our Red Optical Planet Survey (ROPS), aimed at detecting low-mass planets orbiting mid-late M dwarfs. The ∼10 ms⁻¹ precision achieved over 2 consecutive nights with the MIKE spectrograph at Magellan Clay is also found on week long timescales with UVES at VLT. Since we find that UVES is expected to attain photon limited precision of order 2 ms⁻¹ using our novel deconvolution technique, we are limited only by the (≤10 ms⁻¹) stability of atmospheric lines. Rocky planet frequencies of η_⊕ = 0.3−0.7 lead us to expect high planet yields, enabling determination of η_⊕ for the uncharted mid-late M dwarfs with modest surveys.