Dr. Brian Lee
UF
University of Florida Astronomy Colloquium - Feb. 11th, 2009
Characterizing MARVELS
The Multi-object APO Radial Velocity Exoplanet Large-area Survey
(MARVELS) was commissioned as an SDSS-III bright-time survey in Sep.
2008. We provide an overview of what we have learned over the first few
months of operation of our 60-object planet search instrument, ranging
over survey design, hardware characteristics, operational mechanics, and
preliminary radial velocity curves.
We discuss our pre-survey stellar parameter observations using the
existing SDSS 2.5-m spectrographs, used to choose a parent planet search
sample with particularly well-understood stellar parameter cuts. We
comment on designing and planning an operation which will schedule over
3000 hours of bright time to fulfill the eventual survey goal of
searching ~11000 stars between 7.6
We show instrument temperature stability measured in millikelvins over
an observing run, delivering post-calibration instrument RV stability as
good as ~3m/s RMS for calibration lamp sources. Preliminary reductions
of MARVELS observations of the known planet-bearing star TrES-2 (V=11.4)
have yielded ~30m/s RMS RV precision in 40-60 min. exposures. We show a
sampling of early low-amplitude RV variable candidates.
We hope our improving knowledge of the targets and capabilities of
MARVELS will help you to design ancillary science projects using the
SDSS-III-MARVELS data.