Description:

Title: The Gemini Planet Imager Exoplanet Survey

Speaker: Robert de Rosa, University of California - Berkeley

Host: Mel Ulmer

Abstract: Measuring the frequency and distribution of extrasolar planetary systems provides crucial context to understand the formation of our own solar system. While ongoing radial velocity and transit surveys are beginning to have sensitivity to terrestrial planets at separations similar to those within our own solar system, wide orbit Jovian-mass planets remain out of reach. Direct imaging provides a complementary detection technique, being sensitive to the thermal emission from young gas giants in wide (>10 au) orbits around nearby (<100 pc) stars. Using a high-order adaptive optics system, an apodized pupil coronagraph, and an integral field spectrograph, the recently commissioned Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) was designed to directly image such planetary systems. Our team is currently undertaking an 890-hour campaign — the Gemini Planet Imager Exoplanet Survey (GPIES) — to search for planetary-mass companions in wide orbits (4-40 au) around a sample of 600 nearby, young (<300 Myrs) stars. I will discuss the current status of the survey, which began in late 2014, and highlight several of the key science results that I have been involved with, most notably the discovery of the young, cool exoplanet 51 Eridani b.

Keywords: Physics, Astronomy, Astrophysics