The Trans-Atlantic Exoplanet Survey, or ''TrES'', used three 4-inch (10 cm) telescopes located at
Lowell Observatory,
Palomar Observatory, and
Teide Observatory
Teide Observatory ( es, Observatorio del Teide), IAU code 954, is an astronomical observatory on Mount Teide at , located on Tenerife, Spain. It has been operated by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias since its inauguration in 1964. It bec ...
to locate
exoplanets. It was made using the network of small, relatively inexpensive telescopes designed to look specifically for planets orbiting bright stars using the
transit method
Any planet is an extremely faint light source compared to its parent star. For example, a star like the Sun is about a billion times as bright as the reflected light from any of the planets orbiting it. In addition to the intrinsic difficulty o ...
. The array used 4-inch
Schmidt telescope
Schmidt may refer to:
* Schmidt (surname), including list of people with the surname
* Schmidt (singer) (born 1990), German pop and jazz singer
* Schmidt (lunar crater), a small lunar impact crater
* Schmidt (Martian crater), a crater on Mars
* ...
s having
CCD cameras and automated search routines. The survey was created by
David Charbonneau
David Brian Charbonneau is a professor of Astronomy at Harvard University. His research focuses on the development of novel techniques for the detection and characterization of exoplanets orbiting nearby, Sun-like stars.
Early life and educat ...
of the
Center for Astrophysics
Center or centre may refer to:
Mathematics
* Center (geometry), the middle of an object
* Center (algebra), used in various contexts
** Center (group theory)
** Center (ring theory)
* Graph center, the set of all vertices of minimum eccentrici ...
,
Timothy Brown of the
National Center for Atmospheric Research
The US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR ) is a US federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) managed by the nonprofit University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) and funded by the National Science Foundatio ...
, and
Edward Dunham of
Lowell Observatory.
The TrES survey is no longer operational.
Discoveries
The TrES project discovered a total of five planets in its years of operation. All were discovered using the
transit method
Any planet is an extremely faint light source compared to its parent star. For example, a star like the Sun is about a billion times as bright as the reflected light from any of the planets orbiting it. In addition to the intrinsic difficulty o ...
. Note that the discovery papers do not use the "b" suffix typically used in extrasolar planet designations. While forms with and without the b are used in the literature, the table here uses the designations assigned by the discoverers.
See also
TrES light curves of the Kepler field are available at the
NASA Exoplanet Archive
The NASA Exoplanet Archive is an online astronomical exoplanet catalog and data service that collects and serves public data that support the search for and characterization of extra-solar planets (exoplanets) and their host stars. It is part of ...
*
List of extrasolar planets
These are lists of exoplanets. Most of these were discovered by the Kepler space telescope. There are an additional 2,054 potential exoplanets from Kepler's first mission yet to be confirmed, as well as 978 from its " Second Light" mission and ...
Similar exoplanet discovery projects
*
XO Telescope
The XO Telescope is an astronomical telescope located on the 3,054 m (10,000 foot) summit of Haleakala on Maui, Hawaii. It consists of two 200-millimeter telephoto camera lenses, and resembles binoculars in shape. It is used by the XO Project ...
or ''XO''
*
HATNet Project
The Hungarian Automated Telescope Network (HATNet) project is a network of six small fully automated "HAT" telescopes. The scientific goal of the project is to detect and characterize extrasolar planets using the transit method. This network is use ...
or ''HAT''
*
SuperWASP
WASP or Wide Angle Search for Planets is an international consortium of several academic organisations performing an ultra-wide angle search for exoplanets using transit photometry. The array of robotic telescopes aims to survey the entire sky, ...
or ''WASP''
*
Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope or ''KELT''
*
Next-Generation Transit Survey
The Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) is a ground-based robotic search for exoplanets. The facility is located at Paranal Observatory in the Atacama desert in northern Chile, about 2 km from ESO's Very Large Telescope and 0.5 km ...
or ''NGTS''
Exoplanet hunting spacecraft
*
COROT
CoRoT (French: ; English: Convection, Rotation and planetary Transits) was a space telescope mission which operated from 2006 to 2013. The mission's two objectives were to search for extrasolar planets with short orbital periods, particularly th ...
is an
ESA
, owners =
, headquarters = Paris, Île-de-France, France
, coordinates =
, spaceport = Guiana Space Centre
, seal = File:ESA emblem seal.png
, seal_size = 130px
, image = Views in the Main Control Room (120 ...
spacecraft launched December 2006.
*
Kepler Mission
The Kepler space telescope is a disused space telescope launched by NASA in 2009 to discover Earth-sized planets orbiting other stars. Named after astronomer Johannes Kepler, the spacecraft was launched into an Earth-trailing heliocentric orbi ...
is a
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...
spacecraft launched March 2009.
References
External links
* http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070806_largest_exoplanet.html
*
{{Exoplanet search projects
Astronomical observatories
Exoplanet search projects by small telescope