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Abstract. The first dedicated program to search for exoplanets has been
planned and pursued at Physical Research Laboratory. The Program is called
PARAS which stands for PRL Advanced Radial-velocity All-sky Search. The
Search will be conducted by an efficient optical fiber-fed Echelle Spectrograph
attached to a 1.2 m telescope at the Mt. Abu Observatory in India. Using the
simultaneous ThAr calibration technique we plan to achieve RV precision of
3 - 5 m/s on a 10.5 magnitude star. The spectrograph will be commissioned by
early 2010 and the search is expected to begin by the end of 2010. The present
search will look for Neptune-size planets around G, K, and M type dwarfs.
Follow-up precision photometric observations of the prospective candidates will
be done using a wide field 50 cm telescope at the same Observatory. By 2015,
we have plans to have a new 2.5 m-class telescope at the same place and attach
the spectrograph to it, and achieve less than 1 m/s RV precision and look for
super Earths.
1. Introduction
413
414 Chakraborty, Anadarao, and Mahadevan
and the PARAS project is guaranteed its use about 50% of the time. We plan to
do precision differential photometry ( 0.002mag) in the R-band on stars with
prospective planet candidates. The 50 cm aperture telescope will be equipped
with the standard U, V, R, and I filters and the 4K CCD. A data pipe line for
photometric reduction is also under development.
Complementary photometric capability along with PARAS enables scien-
tific programs like the search for transits around long period exoplanets by re-
fining their transit windows with RV and then observing with the 50 cm tele-
scope, and with PARAS to detect the transit with photometry and the Rossiter
McLaughlin effect. PARAS red wavelengths are useful to test concepts of radial
velocity extraction in the presence of telluric features and are an essential test
for future NIR spectrographs.
PARAS will provide possible follow-up and confirmation of candidates from
ongoing multi-object RV surveys like SDSSIII MARVELS and long term mon-
itoring of bright stars to discover low mass exoplanets. Stellar astrophysics
studies will also be possible.
PARAS can be coupled to a future 2.5 m telescope with very little additional slit
losses. Our goal is to have a dedicated or at least 50% time on a 2.5 m robotic
telescope for PARAS and for RV searches by 2015.
The Mt. Abu site has reasonably dark sky, typically about 21 mag/arcsec2
in the V band on a moonless photometric night even though it suffers from some
light pollution from near-by towns. The sky brightness in the K-band is about
12.5 mag/arcsec2 . Thus the site is suitable for telescope apertures up to 3.5m
and especially suited for ground based near-IR observations up to 2.5 microns.
By the advantage of more photon flux we plan to achieve 1 m/s on stars
brighter than 12th mag and less than 1 m/s on bright stars. This will enable
us to look for super-Earths around G and K dwarfs and Earth-sized planets
around M dwarfs. Our observing strategy will focus on long-period planets and
will make efforts to look for planets in the habitable zones of stars.
Acknowledgments. The PARAS project is supported and financed by the
Physical Research Laboratory, which is a unit of the Department of Space, Govt.
of India. The authors would like to thank the staff and faculty at PRL whose
continuing valuable support has made this project possible. AC would like to
thank Prof. J.N. Goswami, the director PRL for his continuing support and en-
couragement for the PARAS project. AC would also like to thank Dr. Francesco
Pepe of the Geneva Observatory, Prof. Larry Ramsey of Penn State University,
and Mr. Subrahmunium of SAC, ISRO for many valuable discussions.
References