MEarth Project

The MEarth Project is a United States NSF-funded, robotic observatory that is part of Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory on Mt. Hopkins, Arizona, USA. The project monitors the brightness of thousands of red dwarf stars with the goal of finding transiting planets. As red dwarf stars are small, any transiting planet blocks larger portion of starlight than transits around Sun-like star. This allows smaller planets to be detected through ground-based observations. MEarth consists of eight RC Optical Systems 40 cm (16 in) f/9 Ritchey-Chrétien telescopes (on Paramount ME robotic mounts) paired with commercially available cameras with 2048 × 2048 Apogee U42 CCDs.^[1]

Planets discovered

• GJ 1214 b
• GJ 1132b

See also

• David Charbonneau

References

External links

• MEarth Project Page

Exoplanet search projects
Ground-based	AAPS APF CORALIE EAPSNet ELODIE EPICS ESPRESSO FINDS Exo-Earths Geneva HARPS HARPS-N GPI HATNet HEK HiCIAO HIRES KELT LCES Magellan MARVELS MEarth MicroFUN MINERVA MOA N2K NGTS NESSI OGLE OPSP PlanetPol PlanetQuest Project 1640 PARAS SEEDS SETI SOPHIE SPECULOOS SPHERE SuperWASP Systemic TrES XO Telescope ZIMPOL/CHEOPS
Space missions	Past and current MOST (2003–present) SWEEPS (2006) COROT (2006–13) EPOXI (2008–13) Kepler (2009–present) KOI exoplanets Gaia (2013–present) Planned CHEOPS (2017) TESS (2017) James Webb Space Telescope (2018) PLATO (2024) WFIRST (mid-2020s) Proposed ATLAST EXCEDE FINESSE New Worlds Mission PEGASE Cancelled Darwin EChO Eddington Space Interferometry Mission Terrestrial Planet Finder
Detection methods Discoveries of exoplanets Lists of exoplanets