NaCo direct imaging survey for giant planets around nearby young stars | |
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Summary:
The NaCo survey for giant planets around nearby young stars is a large GTO project to directly image extra-solar planets in L-band on a VLT unit telescope (UT) at ESO's Paranal observatory. The survey starts in December 2015 and is carried out jointly by the three partners of the former PRIMA-DDL consortium: MPIA Heidelberg, ZAH-LSW Heidelberg, and University of Geneva. The main scientific aim of this survey is the revelation and characterization of the theoretically hypothesized but largely unknown wide-separation (>10au) planet population that may originate from a mix of in-situ formation and early dynamical evolution. Over the next 4-5 years, we will observe about 200-300 nearby (< 200 pc) young (< few 100 Myrs) stars with masses between 0.5 and 5 times the mass of the Sun and which still have either protoplanetary or debris disks. Although the survey will be partially overlapping with other state-of-the-art large exoplanet imaging surveys, like with SPHERE or GPI, it will cover a different parameter range by exploiting the L-band sensitivity of NaCo to lower-mass and older planets.Science team and collaborators:
- Th. K. Henning (MPIA, PI)
- D. Segransan (Univ. Geneva, PI)
- A. Quirrenbach (ZAH-LSW, PI)
- R. Launhardt (MPIA, chair)
- F. Pepe (Univ. Geneva)
- S. Reffert (ZAH-LSW)
- R. van Boekel (MPIA)
- A. Cheetham (Univ. Geneva)
- D. Queloz (Univ. Cambridge)
- S. P. Quanz (ETH Zürich)
- G. Girard (ESO Chile)
- J. Olofsson (Valparaiso University)
- S. Brems (ZAH-LSW)
- A. Müller (MPIA)
- M. Wöllert (MPIA)
GTO proposal:
pdf downloadTarget lists for ESO observing semesters:
Verantwortlich / Responsible: Ralf Launhardt
Letzte Änderung / Last updated: 18.08.2015