Doppler spectroscopy

Doppler spectroscopy (also known as the radial-velocity method, or colloquially, the wobble method) is an indirect method for finding extrasolar planets and brown dwarfs from radial-velocity measurements via observation of Doppler shifts in the spectrum of the planet's parent star.note 1: unconfirmed and disputed Doppler spectroscopy (also known as the radial-velocity method, or colloquially, the wobble method) is an indirect method for finding extrasolar planets and brown dwarfs from radial-velocity measurements via observation of Doppler shifts in the spectrum of the planet's parent star. 669 extrasolar planets (about 29.6% of the total) were discovered using Doppler spectroscopy, as of April 2016. Otto Struve proposed in 1952 the use of powerful spectrographs to detect distant planets. He described how a very large planet, as large as Jupiter, for example, would cause its parent star to wobble slightly as the two objects orbit around their center of mass. He predicted that the small Doppler shifts to the light emitted by the star, caused by its continuously varying radial velocity, would be detectable by the most sensitive spectrographs as tiny redshifts and blueshifts in the star's emission. However, the technology of the time produced radial-velocity measurements with errors of 1,000 m/s or more, making them useless for the detection of orbiting planets. The expected changes in radial velocity are very small – Jupiter causes the Sun to change velocity by about 12.4 m/s over a period of 12 years, and the Earth's effect is only 0.1 m/s over a period of 1 year – so long-term observations by instruments with a very high resolution are required. Advances in spectrometer technology and observational techniques in the 1980s and 1990s produced instruments capable of detecting the first of many new extrasolar planets. The ELODIE spectrograph, installed at the Haute-Provence Observatory in Southern France in 1993, could measure radial-velocity shifts as low as 7 m/s, low enough for an extraterrestrial observer to detect Jupiter's influence on the Sun. Using this instrument, astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz identified 51 Pegasi b, a 'Hot Jupiter' in the constellation Pegasus. Although planets had previously been detected orbiting pulsars, 51 Pegasi b was the first planet ever found orbiting a main-sequence star, and the first detected using Doppler spectroscopy. In November 1995, the scientists published their findings in the journal Nature; the paper has since been cited over 1,000 times. Since that date, over 700 exoplanet candidates have been identified, and most have been detected by Doppler search programs based at the Keck, Lick, and Anglo-Australian Observatories (respectively, the California, Carnegie and Anglo-Australian planet searches), and teams based at the Geneva Extrasolar Planet Search. Beginning in the early 2000s, a second generation of planet-hunting spectrographs permitted far more precise measurements. The HARPS spectrograph, installed at the La Silla Observatory in Chile in 2003, can identify radial-velocity shifts as small as 0.3 m/s, enough to locate many rocky, Earth-like planets. A third generation of spectrographs is expected to come online in 2017. With measurement errors estimated below 0.1 m/s, these new instruments would allow an extraterrestrial observer to detect even Earth. A series of observations is made of the spectrum of light emitted by a star. Periodic variations in the star's spectrum may be detected, with the wavelength of characteristic spectral lines in the spectrum increasing and decreasing regularly over a period of time. Statistical filters are then applied to the data set to cancel out spectrum effects from other sources. Using mathematical best-fit techniques, astronomers can isolate the tell-tale periodic sine wave that indicates a planet in orbit. If an extrasolar planet is detected, a minimum mass for the planet can be determined from the changes in the star's radial velocity. To find a more precise measure of the mass requires knowledge of the inclination of the planet's orbit. A graph of measured radial velocity versus time will give a characteristic curve (sine curve in the case of a circular orbit), and the amplitude of the curve will allow the minimum mass of the planet to be calculated using the binary mass function. The Bayesian Kepler periodogram is a mathematical algorithm, used to detect single or multiple extrasolar planets from successive radial-velocity measurements of the star they are orbiting. It involves a Bayesian statistical analysis of the radial-velocity data, using a prior probability distribution over the space determined by one or more sets of Keplerian orbital parameters. This analysis may be implemented using the Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method.