Alpha Centauri

Simulations Of Astrometric Planet Detection In Alpha Centauri By Intensity Interferometry

By Keith Cowing
astro-ph.IM
May 16, 2022
Filed under
Simulations Of Astrometric Planet Detection In Alpha Centauri By Intensity Interferometry
The left figure shows the position of the four telescopes ((E,N) = (0,0), (1,5), (3,4), (4,1)). The right figure shows the signal according to each baseline for one-night observation. Here the colors of baselines joining the telescope have been taken as the same colors as signals.

Recent dynamical studies indicate that the possibility of an Earth-like planet around αCen A or B should be taken seriously.

Such a planet, if it exists, would perturb the orbital astrometry by <10 μas, which is 10−6 of the separation between the two stars. We assess the feasibility of detecting such perturbations using ground-based intensity interferometry. We simulate a dedicated setup consisting of four 40-cm telescopes equipped with photon counters and correlators with time resolution 0.1ns, and a sort of matched filter implemented through an aperture mask. The astrometric error from one night of observing αCen AB is ≈0.5mas. The error decreases if longer observing times and multiple spectral channels are used, as (channels×nights)−1/2. Km Nitu Rai, Subrata Sarangi, Prasenjit Saha, Soumen Basak Comments: 11 pages, 10 figures
Subjects: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
Cite as: arXiv:2205.06517 [astro-ph.IM](or arXiv:2205.06517v1 [astro-ph.IM] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2205.06517
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Submission history
From: Km Nitu Rai
[v1] Fri, 13 May 2022 08:50:30 UTC (15,519 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.06517
Astrobiology

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