3 ms·
Where are you getting your chances from? Is there some theoretical limit on the sensitivity of the radial velocity technique, independent of current technology?
by uvdiv 14y ago
Where are you getting your chances from? Is there some theoretical limit on the sensitivity of the radial velocity technique, independent of current technology?
(edit): This spectrometer is supposed to be capable of detecting an earth-clone, starting around 2016:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESPRESSO http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESPRESSO
This graph shows its predicted sensitivity (green line for a sun-like star), compared to exoplanets previously detected by the same method (gray circles), and solar system planets for reference:
http://espresso.astro.up.pt/images/content/science/image012.png http://espresso.astro.up.pt/images/content/science/image012....
http://espresso.astro.up.pt/science.php?show=chapter3 http://espresso.astro.up.pt/science.php?show=chapter3
- InclinedPlane 14y agoYou can get a rough estimate of the chances of being able to observe a planet via the transit method by dividing a star's diameter by half of the orbital diameter of the planet (for Earth it's something like a 1:300 chance). For radial velocity the signal detected is proportional to the sine of the orbital inclination. The detectability of Jupiter depends highly on which instruments are being used for observation. My "coin flip" estimate was just a SWAG. If you make use of the best radial velocity detection systems today which have a sensitivity of around 1 m/s and compare that against the maximum 13 m/s radial velocity that Jupiter imparts on the Sun then you end up with much higher chances of detection (80+%) assuming a random relative orbital inclination, but that assumes there aren't any other sources of noise involved.