EXPRESS (EXoPlanets aRound Evolved StarS) radial velocity program tagged posts

Artist’s concept of a giant extrasolar planet. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

The giant planets have masses from 2.4 to 5.5 the mass of Jupiter and have very long orbital periods ranging from nearly 2 to slightly more than 4 Earth years. The team, led by Matias Jones of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, made the discovery during observations under the EXPRESS (EXoPlanets aRound Evolved StarS) radial velocity program. They used 2 telescopes located in the Atacama desert in Chile: the 1.5 m telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory and the 2.2 m telescope at La Silla observatory. Complementary observations were conducted at the 3.9 m Anglo-Australian telescope in Australia.

Using spectrographs mounted on these telescopes, the researchers were monitoring a sample of 166 b...