Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

The N2k Consortium. Vi. Doppler Shifts Without Templates And Three New Short-Period Planets, John Asher Johnson, Geoffrey W. Marcy, Debra A. Fischer, Gregory Laughlin, R. Paul Butler, Gregory W. Henry, Jeff A. Valenti, Eric B. Ford, Steve Vogt, Jason T. Wright

Information Systems and Engineering Management Research Publications

We present a modification to the iodine cell Doppler technique that eliminates the need for an observed stellar template spectrum. For a given target star, we iterate toward a synthetic template spectrum beginning with an existing template of a similar star. We then perturb the shape of this first-guess template to match the program observation of the target star taken through an iodine cell. The elimination of a separate template observation saves valuable telescope time, a feature that is ideally suited for the quick-look strategy employed by the "Next 2000 Stars" (N2K) planet search program. Tests using Keck HIRES (High …