Special Guest Presentations

Presentation: Extra Solar Planet Detection

Abstract: I will give an update on our ongoing radial velocity (RV) search for young planets and brown dwarfs. We are surveying ~140 T Tauri stars (a few Myr old) in the nearby (~140 pc) Taurus-Auriga low-mass star forming region. Our goals are (1) to explore the origins of the brown dwarf desert by measuring the frequency of brown dwarfs as companions to young stars, and (2) to detect the youngest exoplanets to help clarify the possible planet formation mechanisms. Strong stellar activity make such a RV search very challenging. However, we are confident that we have identified the youngest exoplanet detected to date.