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Paper: The Search for Exoplanets in India
Volume: 430, Pathways Towards Habitable Planets
Page: 413
Authors: Chakraborty, A.; Anadarao, B. G.; Mahadevan, S.
Abstract: The first dedicated program to search for exoplanets has been planned and pursued at Physical Research Laboratory. The Program is called PARAS which stands for PRL Advanced Radial-velocity All-sky Search. The Search will be conducted by an efficient optical fiber-fed Echelle Spectrograph attached to a 1.2 m telescope at the Mt. Abu Observatory in India. Using the simultaneous ThAr calibration technique we plan to achieve RV precision of \linebreak 3 - 5 m/s on a 10.5 magnitude star. The spectrograph will be commissioned by early 2010 and the search is expected to begin by the end of 2010. The present search will look for Neptune-size planets around G, K, and M type dwarfs. Follow-up precision photometric observations of the prospective candidates will be done using a wide field 50 cm telescope at the same Observatory. By 2015, we have plans to have a new 2.5 m-class telescope at the same place and attach the spectrograph to it, and achieve less than 1 m/s RV precision and look for super Earths.
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