Planets around intermediate-mass stars. A survey with the Hobby-Eberly Telescope

by Andrzej T Niedzielski (Torun Centre for Astronomy, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Torun, Poland)

Monday 4 Oct 2010, 16:00 → 18:00 Europe/Rome

Aula Conversi (Dipartimento di Fisica - Ed. G. Marconi)

Most of our knowledge of the extrasolar planetary systems comes from discoveries of planets around solar type stars. Of 456 planets orbiting stars with known masses, detected by means of the radial velocity technique, about 80% have masses between 0.5 and 1.4 Msun. This is the observational bias that results from the limitations of the detection method itself. To broaden our understanding of exoplanets, one needs to extend the existing surveys to both low-mass and high-mass stars. The purpose of the Pennsylvania - Torun Planet Search (PTPS) is to detect and characterize planets around stars more massive than the Sun. To this end over 1000 stars are monitored in search for low - mass companions. In this talk I will present the project and the latest planet discoveries with the Hobby-Eberly Telescope.