The proposed work would aim to develop methods to achieve greater precision in radial
velocity (RV) data by characterizing the effects of stellar noise and jitter. Extreme precision
RV data is currently limited around the ~1 m/s level, which is roughly an order of magnitude
greater than the signal of an Earth. Significant effort in the community has focused on reduction
of RV instrument noise. The proposed work focuses on the stellar noise and jitter, which is
comparable in magnitude. Approaching spectrally-dispersed, time-series radial velocity data
from an information theory standpoint holds potential to extract/isolate aspects of RV jitter as
actual signals rather than just noise, even without having a fundamental understanding of the
physics that drives those signals. The proposed work could create techniques which overcome
that barrier and open up RV work to the cm/s regime of lower mass, terrestrial planets.
The proposal effectively established that proposed methods for improving the mitigation of
stellar noise are promising and, if successful, could benefit current and future NASA
programs. The proposed work could extend the results from the TESS mission by improving
data reduction facilities for NEID and other spectrographs for RV follow-up on TESS discovered
planet candidates.
The proposed work to develop an improved EPRV data reduction technique would be
beneficial for the large body of archival RV data. Development of the open-source EPRV
pipeline (wobble) is of particular value to the RV community given the closed-source,
proprietary approach of many other teams. The transparency of the proposed work could
contribute to the community’s understanding of fundamental measurement limits.
Minor Strengths:
The proposal demonstrated that the team has extensive experience in the domain of data analysis.
The proposing team are experts in software development and will make all software public for
the community.
The proposed work would use archival HARPS data for testing of the developed software, thus
all of the necessary observational data are already available. The proposal convincingly
described how the use of solar data from HARPS / HARPS-N is appropriate and a powerful test
case for this investigation due to the SNR and time coverage (in terms of both time series
cadence and duration). The proposed facilities are well-suited for this investigation in terms of
software and hardware.
The proposal demonstrated that the team has experience running hack-session workshops for
assisting the community in data processing and software usage. The proposal sufficiently
described how hack-week events are well-suited for both making progress on the proposed work,
and for disseminating its techniques to a wider audience.
The proposed work would aim to develop methods to achieve greater precision in radial velocity (RV) data by characterizing the effects of stellar noise and jitter. Extreme precision RV data is currently limited around the ~1 m/s level, which is roughly an order of magnitude greater than the signal of an Earth. Significant effort in the community has focused on reduction of RV instrument noise. The proposed work focuses on the stellar noise and jitter, which is comparable in magnitude. Approaching spectrally-dispersed, time-series radial velocity data from an information theory standpoint holds potential to extract/isolate aspects of RV jitter as actual signals rather than just noise, even without having a fundamental understanding of the physics that drives those signals. The proposed work could create techniques which overcome that barrier and open up RV work to the cm/s regime of lower mass, terrestrial planets. The proposal effectively established that proposed methods for improving the mitigation of stellar noise are promising and, if successful, could benefit current and future NASA programs. The proposed work could extend the results from the TESS mission by improving data reduction facilities for NEID and other spectrographs for RV follow-up on TESS discovered planet candidates. The proposed work to develop an improved EPRV data reduction technique would be beneficial for the large body of archival RV data. Development of the open-source EPRV pipeline (wobble) is of particular value to the RV community given the closed-source, proprietary approach of many other teams. The transparency of the proposed work could contribute to the community’s understanding of fundamental measurement limits.
Minor Strengths: The proposal demonstrated that the team has extensive experience in the domain of data analysis. The proposing team are experts in software development and will make all software public for the community. The proposed work would use archival HARPS data for testing of the developed software, thus all of the necessary observational data are already available. The proposal convincingly described how the use of solar data from HARPS / HARPS-N is appropriate and a powerful test case for this investigation due to the SNR and time coverage (in terms of both time series cadence and duration). The proposed facilities are well-suited for this investigation in terms of software and hardware. The proposal demonstrated that the team has experience running hack-session workshops for assisting the community in data processing and software usage. The proposal sufficiently described how hack-week events are well-suited for both making progress on the proposed work, and for disseminating its techniques to a wider audience.