The Automated Planet Finder (APF) Telescope a.k.a. Rocky Planet Finder, is a fully

robotic Robotics is the interdisciplinary study and practice of the design, construction, operation, and use of robots. Within mechanical engineering, robotics is the design and construction of the physical structures of robots, while in computer s ...

2.4-meter optical telescope at

Lick Observatory The Lick Observatory is an astronomical observatory owned and operated by the University of California. It is on the summit of Mount Hamilton (California), Mount Hamilton, in the Diablo Range just east of San Jose, California, United States. The ...

, situated on the summit of Mount Hamilton, east of San Jose, California, USA.Steven S. Vogt et al.,
APF - The Lick Observatory Automated Planet Finder
', 26 February 2014. It is designed to search for extrasolar planets in the range of five to twenty times the mass of the

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...

. The instrument will examine about 10 stars per night. Over the span of a decade, the telescope is expected to study 1,000 nearby stars for planets. Its estimated cost was $10 million. The total cost-to-completion of the APF project was $12.37 million. First light was originally scheduled for 2006, but delays in the construction of the major components of the telescope pushed this back to August 2013. It was commissioned in August 2013. The telescope uses high-precision

radial velocity The radial velocity or line-of-sight velocity of a target with respect to an observer is the rate of change of the vector displacement between the two points. It is formulated as the vector projection of the target-observer relative velocity ...

measurements to measure the gravitational reflex motion of nearby stars caused by the orbiting of planets. The design goal is to detect stellar motions as small as one meter per second, comparable to a slow walking speed. The main targets will be stars within about 100 light years of the Earth. Early tests show that the performance of the Ken and Gloria Levy Doppler Spectrometer is meeting the design goals. The spectrometer has high throughput and is meeting the design sensitivity of (1.0 m/s), similar to the radial velocity precision of

HARPS The High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) is a high-precision Echelle grating, echelle planet-finding spectrograph installed in 2002 on the ESO 3.6 m Telescope, ESO's 3.6m telescope at La Silla Observatory in Chile. The First l ...

and HIRES.

Construction

Parts for the telescopes were constructed by international companies: *The mirror blank was cast in Russia. *The blank was optical figured in Maryland, USA. *Assembly was performed in Arizona, USA. *The dome was built in Australia. *The

spectrograph An optical spectrometer (spectrophotometer, spectrograph or spectroscope) is an instrument used to measure properties of light over a specific portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, typically used in spectroscopic analysis to identify mate ...

was designed and built in

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. *It is located on Mount Hamilton in California.

Collaboration with Breakthrough Listen

The telescope is also being used to search for optical signals coming from

laser A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word ''laser'' originated as an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radi ...

transmissions from hypothetical extraterrestrial civilizations (

search for extraterrestrial intelligence The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (usually shortened as SETI) is an expression that refers to the diverse efforts and scientific projects intended to detect extraterrestrial signals, or any evidence of intelligent life beyond Earth. ...

- SETI). This undertaking is performed for the heavily funded Breakthrough Listen project of the Berkeley SETI Research Center.

References

External links

Automated Planet Finder Telescope - ucolick.org

APF Camera view of Dome - ucolick.org
{{Portal bar, Michigan, Astronomy, Stars, Spaceflight, Outer space, Solar System, Science Telescopes Robotic telescopes Lick Observatory Exoplanet search projects

Construction

Collaboration with Breakthrough Listen

See also

References

External links