IAC researchers take part in a new planet ‘hunter’ – Publimetro México

Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 28 (Europe Press)

The Near-Infrared Planet Searcher (NIRPS) instrument has successfully made its first observations. “This amazing infrared instrument will help us find the closest habitable worlds to our solar system,” says René Doyon, director of the Institute for Exoplanet Research at the University of Montreal and co-principal investigator at NIRPS.

“The NIRPS instrument joins a very small number of high-performance near-infrared spectrometers and is an essential component of observations in collaboration with those of the James Webb Space Telescope and other ground-based observatories,” adds François Bouché, researcher at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and co-principal investigator. NIRPS.

The tool will focus its research on rocky planets, the main goals of understanding how this type of celestial body formed and evolved, and on what life is likely to evolve. NIRPS will search for these rocky exoplanets around cool little red dwarf stars, the most common type of star in our Milky Way, which have masses two to ten times smaller than our sun.

NIRPS will search for exoplanets using the radial velocity method. When a planet orbits a star, its gravity causes the star to “wobble” slightly. By measuring subtle changes in the star’s light, the NIRPS instrument will help measure the planet’s mass, as well as its other properties.

“NIRPS will work with the HARPS instrument, which is also an exoplanet hunter, to extend its range from the visible to the near infrared, which is ideal for searching for Earth-like exoplanets around red stars,” comments Alejandro Suárez, IAC researcher and member of the NIRPS science team.

Another key difference between the two instruments is that NIRPS will rely on a powerful adaptive optics system, a technology that corrects the effects of atmospheric turbulence, which causes stars to twinkle, thus improving its effectiveness in finding and studying exoplanets.

The discoveries made with NIRPS and HARPS will follow some of the most powerful observatories in the world, such as ESO’s Very Large Telescope and the Chilean Very Large Telescope (for which similar instruments are being developed). By working with space and ground-based observatories, NIRPS will be able to obtain clues about the formation of an exoplanet and even look for signs of life in its atmosphere.

“NIRPS will help discover and characterize Earth-like planets in the solar environment that will be studied in detail using ELT,” concludes Junay Gonzalez, a researcher at IAC and member of the NIRPS science team.