Category Archives: HPF Science

Scrambling the pupil of the Hobby Eberly Telescope

Detection of small Earth like planets in the habitable-zones (HZ) of M dwarfs requires precise radial velocity measurements (RV) at the meter-per-second level. These extremely precise measurements are really hard! As the schematic below illustrates, they necessitate each step in … Continue reading

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A very stealthy alias: the impostor planet of Barnard’s star

Introduction One of the signature targets of HPF’s search for nearby exoplanets is Barnard’s star, the second-closest star system to our own Solar system.  Barnard’s star made the news in late 2018, when the CARMENES team announced the discovery of … Continue reading

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The Mysterious Blue Ring Nebula Uncovered

The Blue Ring Nebula is a rare and peculiar object composed of gas expanding from a central star, and is the subject of the most recent paper involving data from HPF. The Blue Ring Nebula (Figure 1) was originally discovered … Continue reading

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