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Abstract:
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Thousands of exoplanets (i.e., planets orbiting stars outside our solar system) have been discovered. However, there remains a dearth of exoplanets that are similar in size or mass to the Earth. One of the methods that has been successful at uncovering exoplanets is the Radial Velocity (RV) method. The RV methods looks for a particular pattern in the wobble of star that could indicate the presence of an orbiting planet. When a planet has a low mass (like the mass of the Earth), the signal from the star’s wobble is difficult to detect because it is so small. Fortunately, astronomers have been building extreme precision radial velocity (EPRV) spectrographs that may be capable of capturing the signal from Earth analogs. However, other signals present due to activity in the atmosphere of a star can hide the planetary signals, or, perhaps worse, mimic a planetary signal leading to false detections. I will discuss ongoing work to detect low-mass exoplanets amid stellar activity.
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