The Doppler Method for the Detection of Exoplanets. Professor Artie Hatzes

Doppler shift with respect to a fiducial spectrum, either a standard star or the target star itself. In the latter case, we measure a shift with respect to spectrum of the star taken at time t₀. Measuring relative Doppler shifts is considerably much easier as zeroth-order effects due to wavelength calibration and systematic errors largely cancel out. This is one reason why relative Doppler measurements today can be made to a precision of ≈1 m s⁻¹. If you wanted to make an absolute Doppler measurement, your accuracy would be a factor of 10–100 worse.

      The detection of exoplanets with the Doppler method is a multistep process:

       Build or use a high-precision RV instrument.

       Make sufficient RV measurements.

       Search your RV time series for periodic signals.

       Understand the nature of the signals that you find.

       Fit orbits to your data.

       Publish your results.

      This book will cover most aspects of this process to help the reader in these various steps. These include

       instrumentation for Doppler measurements,

       reducing instrumental errors,

       calculating RVs,

       the frequency analysis of time series data,

       Keplerian orbits, and

       avoiding false planets.

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      ¹In 1992 Wolszczan & Frail discovered Earth-mass exoplanets