| University of Florida Foundation, Inc. | |
| Christopher Brazda | 352-392-1633 |
| Public Relations | 100 NW 20th St |
| cbrazda@uff.ufl.edu | Gainesville, FL 32603 |
| For immediate release | Tuesday, August 30, 2005 |
W.M. KECK FOUNDATION GRANT MAKING IT POSSIBLE FOR UF RESEARCHERS TO IDENTIFY NEW PLANETS
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- Thanks to an $875,000 grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation, University of Florida astronomy researchers will develop an instrument that has the capability of observing stars at ten times the depth of current surveys, to detect thousands of new planets.
The instrument, called the W.M. Keck Exoplanet Tracker (ET), will be built and tested by a team of UF researchers led by Jian Ge, UF astronomy department professor and principal investigator for the ET project. A prototype of the instrument is currently in use by Ge.
The Keck Foundation grant will fund the development, building and testing of the multi-object Doppler instrument which will be used to conduct a 2-year planet survey to monitor
20,000 stars in the solar neighborhood. The goal is to detect 500 planets and increase the number of known planetary systems by a factor of three. If all goes well, the pilot survey will prompt a decade-long All-Sky Extrasolar Planet Survey involving many telescopes around the world.
“This new-generation instrument will open an entirely new window to planets outside of our solar system,” said Ge. “We will be able to identify and observe thousands of planetary systems around sun-like stars as well as hundreds of planetary systems around low-mass stars in the solar neighborhood that could host life.”
Current planet surveying instruments use single-object echelle Doppler (or radial velocity) instruments which can only observe one star at a time. So far, a total of about 3,000 bright stars have been searched with these conventional instruments on a dozen astronomical telescopes in the world over the last ten years. A total of 150 planets have been identified.
UF will develop the first full-scale version of the ET with a capability of simultaneously observing 100 stars. The instrument will be deployed on the Sloan 2.5-meter wide-field telescope now operating on Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico.
By mid-2008, UF will be ready to start a full-scale All-Sky Extrasolar Planet Survey program to run for 10 years if significant additional funding becomes available.
Survey results will be an essential precursor to future NASA space missions aiming to detect Earth-like planets and have the potential for making major scientific advances, helping address the question, “Are we alone?”
Based in Los Angeles, the W.M. Keck Foundation was established in 1954 by the late W.M. Keck, founder of the Superior Oil Company. The foundation's grant making is focused primarily on pioneering efforts in the areas of medical research, science and engineering. The foundation also maintains a Southern California grant program that provides support in the areas of civic and community services with a special emphasis on children and youth.
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