“A PAthway toward the Characterization of Habitable Earths”
APACHE Project’s News
The APACHE Project @UNICAMearth
02 mesi fa
Scritto da Matteo Soldi
in APACHE Project's News
Andrea Bernagozzi, scientific researcher at the OAVdA and member of the APACHE research team, will give on Monday, March 25th a talk about extrasolar planets for a refresher course oriented towards Italian high school science teachers.
The talk will be presented at 15.30 hour at the Science Museum of the University of Camerino, Italy (http://www.unicam.it/museoscienzenaturali/docfile/seminari_per%20insegnanti_2013-1-2-3.pdf).
A new guest from China in visit to the APACHEs
03 mesi fa
Scritto da Mario Damasso
in APACHE Project's News
On 8th of March we had the pleasure to host dr. ZengHua Zhang at the Astronomical Observatory Of the Autonomous Region of the Aosta Valley (OAVdA). He has got his PhD at the Centre for Astrophysics Research (University of Hertfordshire).
ZengHua, during a brief permanence at the INAF – Astrophysical Observatory of Torino, has found the time to come to visit our Observatory and the APACHE telescope array. His research topics include the discovery and characterization of low mass stars and brown dwarfs in large area surveys, the study of the physical properties of disk and halo with benchmarks in binary systems, and the search for the extreme ultracool objects in near-infrared surveys. He gave a very interesting seminar for the OAVdA staff about the ultracool dwarfs in the Galactic Halo (see the picture, of course ZengHua is the one in the middle!), leaving us with an increased curiosity about such celestial objects and about the possibility of existence of planets orbiting ultracool dwarfs.
Here it is the personal Web page of ZengHua.
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4 mesi fa
Scritto da Mario Damasso
in APACHE Project's News
As recently reiterated in a paper by C. D. Dressing and D. Charbonneau (The Occurrence Rate of Small Planets around Small Stars, http://arxiv.org/abs/1302.1647), looking for habitable planets around low-mass stars is a very promising research field. The APACHE Project is working on it every night, when the sky collaborates. Since August, some of the M dwarfs stars observed by the APACHE telescopes are targets also observed by the spectrograph HARPS-N, hosted by the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG) at the top of La Palma island in the Canary archipelago, in the framework of the very ambitious, challenging and long-term observational programme GAPS (Characterizing the Global Architectures of Planetary Systems).
APACHE Project @ the Hot Planets and Cool Stars meeting
07 mesi fa
The APACHE Project will be presented at the “Hot Planets and Cool Stars” meeting which will be held at the Max Planck Institute for extraterrestrial Physics in Garching (Germany), from 12 to 16 November (http://www.mpe.mpg.de/events/ropacs-2012/Home.html).
Alessandro Sozzetti will have a talk on Tuesday 13th, and Jean Mark Christille will present the poster “THE APACHE Survey Hardware and Software Design: Tools for an Automatic Search of Small-size Transiting Exoplanets”.
APACHE Project oral contribution @ GREAT-ESF Workshop in Turin
07 mesi fa
As we reported yesterday in this post (here), we have participated at the GREAT-ESF Workshop “GAIA and Exoplanets: GREAT Synergies at the Horizons“ in Turin Nov 5-7, 2012.
In this post, almost in real time, you can find the presentation that we made at the conference.
APACHE Project @ GREAT-ESF Workshop in Turin (Nov, 5-7, 2012)
07 mesi fa
The APACHE's telescopes @ work
The APACHE Project will be presented tomorrow (7th November, 2012 at session 2/3: 12.00-12.20) at the GREAT-ESF Workshop “GAIA and Exoplanets: GREAT Synergies at the Horizons in Turin Nov 5-7, 2012.
We will be there with an oral contribution of Mario Damasso, PhD Student at Doctoral School in Astronomy, University of Padova, and scientific researcher at the OAVdA:
The APACHE Project: searching for transiting planets around cool stars
Here you can find the abstract and more information.
and with a poster by Jean Marc Christille, PhD Student, University of Perugia and scientific researcher at the OAVdA:
THE APACHE Survey Hardware and Software Design: Tools for an Automatic Search of Small-size Transiting Exoplanets
Here you can find the abstract and more information
As soon as possible we will publish the slides and the poster.
Stay tuned.
APACHE Project presentation @ Italian Physical Society (Naples, 19th september 2012)
08 mesi fa
As we reported a few weeks ago in this post (here), we have participated at the congress of the Italian Physical Society. In this post you can find the presentation that we made at the conference.
Damasso sif from Matteo Soldi
The APACHE Project @ European Planetary Science Congress 2012 in Madrid
08 mesi fa
- Official Poster of the European Planetary Science Congress
The APACHE team is presenting a poster at the European Planetary Science Congress 2012, which is held in Madrid (23-28 September, www.epsc2012.eu/information/general_information.html).
Paolo Giacobbe will show the milestones of the Project and discuss the recent developments presentig the work:
“Photometric transit search for planets around cool stars from the western Italian Alps: The APACHE survey” (http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EPSC2012/EPSC2012-755.pdf)
The APACHE Project @ the Italian Physical Society conferece in Naples (19th september, 2012)
09 mesi fa
Scritto da Matteo Soldi
in APACHE Project's News
The APACHE Project will be presented tomorrow (19th september, 2012) at the XCVIII Congress of the Italian Society of Physics within the Communication III (astroparticle physics, astrophysics and cosmology).
Photometric transit search for planets around cool stars from the Western Italian Alps: the APACHE Project.
Damasso M., Bernagozzi A., Bertolini E., Calcidese P., Carbognani A., Cenadelli D., Christille J., Giacobbe P., Lanteri L., Lattanzi M. G., Sozzetti A., Smart R.
Abstract:
The search for potentially habitable extrasolar planets is a topic full of expectations and promises, and the red dwarfs are now considered among the most interesting targets where to look for. Small-size ground-based telescopes can effectively be used to discover transiting rocky planets in orbit around nearby M dwarfs and, since 2008, at the Astronomical Observatory of the Autonomous Region of Aosta Valley (OAVdA) we have been preparing for the long-term photometric survey APACHE. Aimed at finding small-size planets around thousands of nearby early and mid-type M dwarfs, APACHE (A PAthway toward the Characterization of Habitable Earths) is designed to use an array of five dedicated and identical 40-cm Ritchey-Chretien telescopes and its observations started in Spring 2012. We present the APACHE Project discussing the main results obtained so far while preparing for the observing campaign, and we outline the main characteristics of the survey final set-up. Some preliminary results from the first months of observations will be also presented.
For more information: http://congresso.sif.it/talk/282
Spectroscopic characterization of the APACHE M dwarfs
01 anno fa
Scritto da Mario Damasso
in APACHE Project's News
Since February 2012 we started a National collaboration aimed at spectroscopically characterizing dozens of M dwarfs which are listed in the APACHE Input Catalog.
Low-resolution spectra are acquired with the Copernico (182 cm) and Galileo (122 cm) telescopes at the Asiago Astrophysical Observatory, and they will be used mostly:
1) to determine an accurate spectral type of the stars;
2) to search for evidence of chromospheric activity.
The red dwarfs photometrically observed by the APACHE team represent a major component of the stars observed at the Asiago Observatory, and the collected spectra are of great importance for an optimal selection and prioritization of the target to be monitored by the APACHE telescopes.
The spectroscopic survey at Asiago, that will last for at least 2 years, is a collaboration among the APACHE team and astronomers from the University of Padova, the Astronomical Observatory of Padova and the Astronomical Observatory of Palermo, the last two being part of the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF).
