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Microlensing has proven to be a valuable tool to search for extrasolar planets of Jovian- to Super-Earth-mass planets at orbits of a few AU. Since planetary signals are of very short duration, an intense and continuous monitoring is required. This is achieved by ground-based networks of telescopes (PLANET/RoboNET, microFUN) following up targets, which are identified as microlensing events by single dedicated telescopes (OGLE, MOA). Microlensing has led to four already published detections of extrasolar planets, one of them being OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb, a planet of only ~5.5 M_earth orbiting its M-dwarf host star at ~2.6 AU. Very recent observations (May--September 2007) provided more planetary candidates, still under study, that will double the number of detections. For non-planetary microlensing events observed from 1995 to 2006 we compute detection efficiency diagrams, which can then be used to derive an estimate of the Galactic abundance of cool planets in the mass regime from Jupiters to Sub-Neptunes.
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Due to their extremely small luminosity compared to the stars they orbit, planets outside our own Solar System are extraordinarily difficult to detect directly in optical light. Careful photometric monitoring of distant stars, however, can reveal the presence of exoplanets via the microlensing or eclipsing effects they induce. The international PLANET collaboration is performing such monitoring using a cadre of semi-dedicated telescopes around the world. Their results constrain the number of gas giants orbiting 1--7 AU from the most typical stars in the Galaxy. Upgrades in the program are opening regions of ``exoplanet discovery space -- toward smaller masses and larger orbital radii -- that are inaccessible to the Doppler velocity technique.
Gravitational microlensing events of high magnification have been shown to be promising targets for detecting extrasolar planets. However, only a few events of high magnification have been found using conventional survey techniques. Here we demonstrate that high magnification events can be readily found in microlensing surveys using a strategy that combines high frequency sampling of target fields with online difference imaging analysis. We present 10 microlensing events with peak magnifications greater than 40 that were detected in real-time towards the Galactic Bulge during 2001 by MOA. We show that Earth mass planets can be detected in future events such as these through intensive follow-up observations around the event peaks. We report this result with urgency as a similar number of such events are expected in 2002.
We carried out an imaging survey for extrasolar planets around stars in the Pleiades (125 Myr, 135 pc) in the $H$ and $K_{S}$ bands using HiCIAO combined with the adaptive optics, AO188, on the Subaru telescope. We found 13 companion candidates fainter than 14.5 mag in the $H$ band around 9 stars. Five of these 13 were confirmed to be background stars by measurement of their proper motion. One was not found in the second epoch observation, and thus was not a background or companion object. One had multi-epoch image, but the precision of its proper motion was not sufficient to conclude whether it was background object. Four other candidates are waiting for second epoch observations to determine their proper motion. Finally, the remaining 2 were confirmed to be 60 $M_{J}$ brown dwarf companions orbiting around HD 23514 (G0) and HII 1348 (K5) respectively, as had been reported in previous studies. In our observations, the average detection limit for a point source was 20.3 mag in the $H$ band beyond 1.5 from the central star. On the basis of this detection limit, we calculated the detection efficiency to be 90% for a planet with 6 to 12 Jovian masses and a semi-major axis of 50--1000 AU. For this we extrapolated the distribution of planet mass and semi-major axis derived from RV observations and adopted the planet evolution model of Baraffe et al. (2003). As there was no detection of a planet, we estimated the frequency of such planets to be less than 17.9% ($2sigma$) around one star of the Pleiades cluster.
The discovery of extra-solar planets is one of the greatest achievements of modern astronomy. The detection of planets with a wide range of masses demonstrates that extra-solar planets of low mass exist. In this paper we describe a mission, called Darwin, whose primary goal is the search for, and characterization of, terrestrial extrasolar planets and the search for life. Accomplishing the mission objectives will require collaborative science across disciplines including astrophysics, planetary sciences, chemistry and microbiology. Darwin is designed to detect and perform spectroscopic analysis of rocky planets similar to the Earth at mid-infrared wavelengths (6 - 20 micron), where an advantageous contrast ratio between star and planet occurs. The baseline mission lasts 5 years and consists of approximately 200 individual target stars. Among these, 25 to 50 planetary systems can be studied spectroscopically, searching for gases such as CO2, H2O, CH4 and O3. Many of the key technologies required for the construction of Darwin have already been demonstrated and the remainder are estimated to be mature in the near future. Darwin is a mission that will ignite intense interest in both the research community and the wider public.
We report the detection of two exoplanets and a further tentative candidate around the M-dwarf stars Gl96 and Gl617A, based on radial velocity measurements obtained with the SOPHIE spectrograph at the Observatoire de Haute-Provence. Both stars were observed in the context of the SOPHIE exoplanet consortiums dedicated M-dwarf subprogramme, which aims to detect exoplanets around nearby M-dwarf stars through a systematic survey. For Gl96, we present the discovery of a new exoplanet at 73.9 d with a minimum mass of 19.66 earth masses. Gl96 b has an eccentricity of 0.44, placing it among the most eccentric planets orbiting M stars. For Gl617A we independently confirm a recently reported exoplanet at 86.7 d with a minimum mass of 31.29 earth masses. Both Gl96 b and Gl617A b are potentially within the habitable zone, though Gl96 bs high eccentricity may take it too close to the star at periapsis.
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