Name: Fraser Clarke

Institution: University of Oxford

e-mail: fclarke(no-spam)astro.ox.ac.uk

Partner Contry: UK

Science Meeting: Yes

User Meeting: Yes

NGO Staff Meeting: No

Presentation: Yes

Format: Oral

Title: Searching for planets around white dwarfs; results

Co-author: M Burleigh

Co-authors' Institutions: University of Leicester, U.K.

Abstract:

Over the past five years, we have conducted a large imaging programming on Gemini to search for planets and cool sub-stellar companions to ~40 nearby white dwarfs. Our survey, based on detecting objects with common proper motion, is sensitive to companions as low as 3 Jupiter masses in several case (and 10 Jupiter masses in the majority of cases). This sensitivity, combined with the properties of the white dwarf progenitors (B--F stars), means we have probed a previously unexplored region of stellar parameter space. We will present the results of this survey, and compare them to surveys for companions in other areas of stellar parameter space.

Comments:

Attendance dependent on funding from Gemini