47 Tucanae Planet Search

Taking Measurements of Planets in the Globular Cluster 47 Tucanae

Last Update: August the 22th 2001, (D.Naef)

General Description Under Construction)
Team Members
Links related to this Programme

Publications

47 Tucanane taken with the HST-WFPC2 (right) and from a ground based telescope (left)
See the STSCI Press Release for more details

General Description

Programme Goal: Detection of Transiting Giant Planets

Telescope: Hubble Space Telescope

Instrument: Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2)

4 CCD
Filters used: F555W (V filter) and F814W (I filter)

Targets: 47 Tuc Main Sequence Stars (number of usable targets ~34000)

Telescope Time Allocation: 8.3 X 24 hours, continuous observation (120 X 96.4-min HST Orbits)

Observations schedule: 1999 July 3-11

Data Obtained:

636 F555W Images (exposure time: 160 sec per image)
653 F814W Images (exposure time: 160 sec per image)

Number of Planetary Transits expected:

about 1% of Main Sequence Stars of the Solar Neighbourhood host a Short-Period Planet ("Hot Jupiters")
Transit Probability for the Hot Jupiters: ~ 10%
Therefore 1 Transit/1000 Stars is expected
30-40 Transits for the full surveyed Stellar Sample are expected if the 47 Tuc Planet occurence is the same as in Field Stars

Results:

No Planetary Transit Detected

Team Members

NASA Investigators

Ronald L. GILLILAND (Principal Investigator), STScI, Baltimore, USA
Timothy M. BROWN, High Altitude Observatory, Boulder, USA
Adam BURROWS, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA
William D. COCHRAN, University of Texas, Austin, USA
Peter D. EDMONDS, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, USA
Puragra GUHATHAKURTA, UCO/Lick Observatory, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA
Douglas N.C. LIN, UCO/Lick Observatory, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA
Geoffrey W. MARCY, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Eugene F. MILONE, University of Calgary, Canada
Ata SARAJEDINI, Wesleyan University, USA
Stein SIGURDSSON, University of Pennsylvania, USA
Don A. VANDENBERG, University of Victoria, Canada
Steven S. VOGT, UCO/Lick Observatory, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA

ESA Investigators

Soeren FRANDSEN, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
Michel MAYOR, Observatoire de Genève, Switzerland
Dominique Naef, Observatoire de Genève, Switzerland

Links Related to this Programme

NASA