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Project Progress

During the period covered in this report, we have continued a search for planets around K-giants with the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET). Collaborators in this research are Drs. M. Konacki (Caltech) and A. Niedzielski (Toru_ Centre for Astronomy, Poland). Detection and studies of planets around post-main sequence stars provide information on planet formation and survival around massive stars and represent an important extension of the ongoing planet searches around Sun-like stars. They also probe the dynamical evolution of old planetary systems driven by changes in their parent stars as they leave the main sequence.

So far, we have collected multiple epoch observations for 41 stars out of the ~400 targets on our observing list. Further scrutiny has revealed at least two stars that may have giant planets around them. In fact, one of these stars is almost certain to have a ~8 Jupiter mass companion in a 2 A.U., ~500 day orbit. If confirmed by further observations, this will be the first planet detected by our survey. Furthermore, in our continuing quest to improve the precision of radial velocity measurements with the HET, we have achieved a ~5 m/s precision and are on our way to improve it even more. The survey itself and its first results have been reported at two international conferences in Berlin, Germany, and Syros, Greece.