The Phases Differential Astrometry Data Archive. III. Limits to Tertiary Companions

Creators: Muterspaugh, Matthew W.; Lane, Benjamin F.; Kulkarni, S. R.; Konacki, Maciej; Burke, Bernard F.; Colavita, M. M.; Shao, M.

Abstract

The Palomar High-precision Astrometric Search for Exoplanet Systems (PHASES) monitored 51 subarcsecond binary systems to evaluate whether tertiary companions as small as Jovian planets orbited either the primary or secondary stars, perturbing their otherwise smooth Keplerian motions. Twenty-one of those systems were observed 10 or more times and show no evidence of additional companions. A new algorithm is presented for identifying astrometric companions and establishing the (companion mass)-(orbital period) combinations that can be excluded from existence with high confidence based on the PHASES observations, and the regions of mass-period phase space being excluded are presented for 21 PHASES binaries.

Additional Information

© 2010 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2010 July 8; accepted 2010 September 4; published 2010 October 20. PHASES benefits from the efforts of the PTI collaboration members who have each contributed to the development of an extremely reliable observational instrument. Without this outstanding engineering effort to produce a solid foundation, advanced phase-referencing techniques would not have been possible. We thank PTI's night assistant Kevin Rykoski for his efforts to maintain PTI in excellent condition and operating PTI in phase-referencing mode every week. Part of the work described in this paper was performed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Interferometer data were obtained at the Palomar Observatory with the NASA Palomar Testbed Interferometer, supported by NASA contracts to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This publication makes use of data products from the TwoMicron All Sky Survey, which is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation. This research has made use of the Simbad database, operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France. M.W.M. acknowledges support from the Townes Fellowship Program, Tennessee State University, and the state of Tennessee through its Centers of Excellence program. Some of the software used for analysis was developed as part of the SIM Double Blind Test with support from NASA contract NAS7-03001 (JPL 1336910). PHASES is funded in part by the California Institute of Technology Astronomy Department, and by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under grant no. NNG05GJ58G issued through the Terrestrial Planet Finder Foundation Science Program. This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation through grants AST 0300096, AST 0507590, and AST 0505366. M.K. is supported by the Foundation for Polish Science through a FOCUS grant and fellowship, by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education through grant N203 3020 35. Facilities: PO:PTI

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