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<p><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"">Speaker: Bruce MacIntosh<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"">Affiliation: LLNL<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"">Title: Direct imaging of extrasolar planets<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"">Date: Thursday, April 19, 2012<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"">Time: 3:30 PM Refreshments in CAS 500, 4:00 PM Talk<br>
Place: 725 Commonwealth Ave. CAS 502<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"">Abstract:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"">Over the past 15 years, more than 700 extrasolar planets have been detected. Almost all known extrasolar planets have been discovered indirectly – through their gravitational perturbation
or their transits of their parent star. I will briefly review these discoveries and their implications for our understanding of planetary formation. Although these indirect techniques are powerful, they are also restricted to a limited range of orbital phase
space, and in most cases provide no constraints on the planet’s properties beyond mass or radius. Direct detection – separating the light of the planet from the parent star – opens up new areas of exoplanet phase space and new avenues for planet characterization.
The power of this technique is shown in the image of four giant planets orbiting the young star HR8799, and I will discuss the spectroscopic characterization of the planets, numerical analysis of the stability of the system, and the challenge it represents
for theories of planet formation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"">The next major step in direct detection will be the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI), a dedicated exoplanet instrument combining a 4096-actuator silicon MEMS adaptive optics system, an apodized
coronagraph to control diffraction, and nanometer-precision wavefront sensing to achieve sensitivity an order of magnitude beyond any current ground or space facility. GPI is currently undergoing final integration and test and will deploy in early 2012 on
the Gemini South 8-m telescope. I will give an overview of GPI’s design and capabilities. Once GPI is operational, we will use it to carry out the Gemini Planet Imager Exoplanet Survey (GPIES), a 900-hour survey of 600 young stars in the solar neighborhood.
The GPIES survey has been optimized to to extend our knowledge of giant planet populations from 5 to 50 AU and provide robust statistical information to constrain planet-formation models.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Amanda Rochette<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Proposal Development Administrator<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Boston University<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Center for Space Physics & Institute for Astrophysical Research<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">725 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 506, Boston, MA 02215<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Tel: (617) 353-5992 Fax: (617) 353-6463<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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