First radial velocity results from the MINiature Exoplanet Radial Velocity Array (MINERVA)
Abstract
The MINiature Exoplanet Radial Velocity Array (MINERVA) is a dedicated observatory of four 0.7m robotic telescopes fiber-fed to a KiwiSpec spectrograph. The MINERVA mission is to discover super-Earths in the habitable zones of nearby stars. This can be accomplished with MINERVA's unique combination of high precision and high cadence over long time periods. In this work, we detail changes to the MINERVA facility that have occurred since our previous paper. We then describe MINERVA's robotic control software, the process by which we perform 1D spectral extraction, and our forward modeling Doppler pipeline. In the process of improving our forward modeling procedure, we found that our spectrograph's intrinsic instrumental profile is stable for at least nine months. Because of that, we characterized our instrumental profile with a time-independent, cubic spline function based on the profile in the cross dispersion direction, with which we achieved a radial velocity precision similar to using a conventional "sum-of-Gaussians" instrumental profile: 1.8 m s over 1.5 months on the RV standard star HD 122064. Therefore, we conclude that the instrumental profile need not be perfectly accurate as long as it is stable. In addition, we observed 51 Peg and our results are consistent with the literature, confirming our spectrograph and Doppler pipeline are producing accurate and precise radial velocities.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1904.09991,
title = {First radial velocity results from the MINiature Exoplanet Radial Velocity Array (MINERVA)},
author = {Maurice L. Wilson and Jason D. Eastman and Matthew A. Cornachione and Sharon X. Wang and Samson A. Johnson and David H. Sliski and William J. Schap and Timothy D. Morton and John Asher Johnson and Nate McCrady and Jason T. Wright and Robert A. Wittenmyer and Peter Plavchan and Cullen H. Blake and Jonathan J. Swift and Michael Bottom and Ashley D. Baker and Stuart I. Barnes and Perry Berlind and Eric Blackhurst and Thomas G. Beatty and Adam S. Bolton and Bryson Cale and Michael L. Calkins and Ana Colón and Jon de Vera and Gilbert Esquerdo and Emilio E. Falco and Pascal Fortin and Juliana Garcia-Mejia and Claire Geneser and Steven R. Gibson and Gabriel Grell and Ted Groner and Samuel Halverson and John Hamlin and M. Henderson and J. Horner and Audrey Houghton and Stefaan Janssens and Graeme Jonas and Damien Jones and Annie Kirby and George Lawrence and Julien Andrew Luebbers and Philip S. Muirhead and Justin Myles and Chantanelle Nava and Kevin O Rivera-García and Tony Reed and Howard M. Relles and Reed Riddle and Connor Robinson and Forest Chaput de Saintonge and Anthony Sergi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1904.09991},
year = {2019}
}
Comments
22 pages, 9 figures, submitted to PASP, Peer-Reviewed and Accepted