The MEarth-North and MEarth-South transit surveys: searching for habitable super-Earth exoplanets around nearby M-dwarfs

TL;DR

The MEarth project uses ground-based transit surveys in both hemispheres to detect potentially habitable Earth-sized exoplanets around nearby M-dwarfs, providing valuable data and insights into planet occurrence and stellar astrophysics.

Contribution

This paper updates on MEarth survey results, including planet occurrence rates and stellar astrophysics, with publicly available light curve data for the first time.

Findings

Detection of potential habitable super-Earths around M-dwarfs

High occurrence rate of planets around mid-to-late M-dwarfs

Public release of one year of light curve data

Abstract

Detection and characterization of potentially habitable Earth-size extrasolar planets is one of the major goals of contemporary astronomy. By applying the transit method to very low-mass M-dwarfs, it is possible to find these planets from the ground with present-day instrumentation and observational techniques. The MEarth project is one such survey with stations in both hemispheres: MEarth-North at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory, Mount Hopkins, Arizona, and MEarth-South at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, Chile. We present an update on recent results of this survey, for planet occurrence rates, and interesting stellar astrophysics, for which our sample of 3000 nearby mid-to-late M-dwarfs has been very fruitful. All light curves gathered during the survey are made publicly available after one year, and we describe how to access and use these data.