Future Astrometry with ALMA to characterise extra-solar planet orbits

Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0308226

From: Jean-Francois Lestrade <jean-francois.lestrade@obspm.fr>

Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 08:50:23 GMT   (28kb)

Authors:
Jean-Francois Lestrade (Observatoire de Paris – CNRS)

Comments: 5 pages; 1 table; 2 figures Latex

Journal-ref: Proceedings of an International Conference on Scientific Frontiers
in Research on Extrasolar PlanetsSymposium, held on June 18-21, 2002, in
Washington DC, USA, ASP Conference Series, vol. 294, 2003, Editor Drake
Deming and Seager, p. 587-590

The most complete catalogue of nearby stars (Gliese and Jarheiss, 1991) has
been used to search for the stars whose photospheric thermal emission can be
detected by the future millimeter array ALMA. We found that 446 nearby stars
with spectral types ranging from A to M are detectable. A long-term astrometric
observation programme (> 10 yr) of these stars with ALMA (theoretical
astrometric precision = 0.1 milliarcsecond) would be sensitive to wobbles
caused by the gravitational pull of possible unseen planets. Such a programme
would probe minimum planetary masses as low as 0.1 Jupiter for an orbital
period of 10 years. We provide histogrammes of these minimum masses and of ALMA
integration times for these 446 ALMA stars.

References and citations for this submission:

SLAC-SPIRES HEP (refers to ,
cited by, arXiv reformatted)