paper concerning planets around other stars

[Stupendous Man <richmond@a188-l009.rit.edu>]

  The Aug 16 issue of astro-ph includes a paper
 
             http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0008223

titled "Mining the Metal-Rich Stars for Planets," by Gregory Laughlin.
The abstract is listed at the end of this message.  Part of the paper
discusses searches for planets by detecting dips in stellar light
due to a transit.  This is something that might (under ideal circumstances)
be possible with a Mark IV, or some other small telescope.

  Table 2 in the paper lists a set of 206 stars which, the author argues,
are especially likely to show transits.  He estimates that 1 or 2 of 
those stars might reveal transits to a dedicated search.

  Interesting reading.

                                       Michael Richmond

------------------ abstract follows ---------------------------------

        Mining the Metal-Rich Stars for Planets 
    
    	We examine the correlation between stellar metallicity
    and short period planets. It appears that approximately 1%
    of dwarf stars in the solar neighborhood harbor short-period
    planets characterized by near-circular orbits and orbital
    periods P<20 days. However, among the most metal-rich stars
    (defined as having [Fe/H]>0.2 dex), it appears that the
    fraction increases to 10%. Using the Hipparcos database and
    the Hauck & Mermilliod (1998) compilation of Stromgren uvby
    photometry, we identify a sample of 206 metal-rich stars of
    spectral type K, G, and F which have an enhanced probability
    of harboring short-period planets. Many of these stars would
    be excellent candidates for addition to radial velocity
    surveys. We have searched the Hipparcos epoch photometry for
    transiting planets within our 206 star catalog. We find that
    the quality of the Hipparcos data is not high enough to
    permit unambiguous transit detections. It is, however,
    possible to identify candidate transit periods.  We then
    discuss various ramifications of the stellar metallicity -
    planet connection. First, we show that there is preliminary
    evidence for increasing metallicity with increasing stellar
    mass among known planet-bearing stars. This trend can be
    explained by a scenario in which planet-bearing stars
    accrete an average of 30 Earth Masses of rocky material
    after the gaseous protoplanetary disk phase has ended. We
    present dynamical calculation which suggest that a survey of
    metallicities of spectroscopic binary stars can be used to
    understand the root cause of the stellar metallicity -
    planet connection.