IDENTIFICACIÓ DE RISCOS LABORALS

The Doppler and transit photometry techniques have so far provided the bulk of observational data from which we are learning about planets orbiting other stars. A variety of new as well as old techniques are being now utilized to perform detailed follow-up studies of known systems and to contribute to enlarge the number of discovered planets. The efforts have focused on providing better characterization of newly discovered hot Jupiters, with the exception of transit photometry, which I have addressed in Section 2.1, and astrometry, which I discuss below.

2.2.6.1 Astrometry Astronomers have long sought to find astrometric perturbations in a star’s motion due to orbiting planet-sized companions. Many attempts have failed, some have produced more or less significant upper limits, a few have been successful.

The astrometric search for planets orbiting Barnard’s Star (GJ 699) and Lalande 21185 (HD 95735) has spanned almost half a century. However, none of the Jupiter-sized compan- ions on long-period orbits around Barnard’s Star and Lalande 21185 announced by van de Kamp (1963, 1969a, b, 1975, 1982), Lippincott (1960a, b), Hershey & Lippincott (1982), and Gatewood (1996) was ever confirmed.

The Hipparcos Intermediate Astrometric Data (IAD) have been re-analyzed in recent years, in order to either detect the planet-induced stellar astrometric motion of the bright hosts or place upper limits to the magnitude of the perturbation, in the case of no detections. The Hipparcos IAD have been re-processed by several authors either alone, or in combina-

tion with either the spectroscopic information or with additional ground-based astrometric measurements. Initial claims of preliminary astrometric masses in the brown dwarf and stellar mass regime obtained by Mazeh et al. (1999), Zucker & Mazeh (2000), Gatewood et al. (2001), and Han et al. (2001) for over 30 candidate planets discovered by Doppler spectroscopy implied that radial-velocity surveys are strongly biased toward quasi-face-on configurations (i < 5◦_{). These claims have not survived detailed studies by Pourbaix (2001),}

Pourbaix & Arenou (2001) and Zucker & Mazeh (2001b), who showed that the conclusions are likely an artifact of the reduction procedure as applied to the Hipparcos data. However, in the case of non-detections, the Hipparcos IAD have been used successfully by Perryman et al. (1996) and Zucker & Mazeh (2001b) to confirm the sub-stellar nature of over two dozen Doppler-detected companions.

Space-borne narrow-field astrometry of the planet host star %1 _{Cnc with the Fine Guid-}

ance Sensors (FGS) aboard HST has been carried out by McGrath et al. (2002, 2004). These authors failed to reveal astrometric motion induced by the Mpsin i = 0.88 MJ object

on a 14.65-day orbit in the Doppler-detected multiple-planet system. With a nominal single- measurement precision of 0.5 mas, the HST /FGS data allow to place a firm (5σ) upper limit of ∼ 30 MJ on the actual mass of the companion, ruling out the preliminary Hipparcos-based

mass estimate by Han et al. (2001).

The first undisputed astrometric mass determined for an extrasolar planet was reported by Benedict et al. (2002). The authors used HST /FGS measurements in combination with the available radial-velocity data to derive a perturbation size α = 250 ± 60 µas, inclination angle i = 84◦_{± 6}◦_{, and actual mass M}

p = 1.89 ± 0.34 MJ for the outer companion in the

resonant two-planet system GJ 876. In the recent announcement (McArthur et al. 2004) of the discovery of a Neptune-sized planet on a 2.8 days orbit in the %1 _{Cnc system (which}

brought the number of planets in the system to a total of four), HST /FGS measurements were re-analyzed to estimate, from the small arc of the orbit covered in the limited HST dataset, a perturbation size (1.94 ± 0.4 mas) and inclination (53◦_{± 6}◦_{.8) for the outermost}

planet, orbiting at ∼ 5.9 AU. Under the assumption of perfect coplanarity of all planets in the system, this implies an actual mass for the innermost planet of 17.7 ± 5.57 M⊕.

And and ε Eri, and plan to combine the data with the available radial-velocity datasets and with lower-per-measurement precision ground-based astrometry. The predicted minimum perturbation sizes of the long-period (3.51 yr and 6.85 yr, respectively) planets orbiting these stars (αυ And ' 540 µas and αε Eri ' 1120 µas, respectively) should be clearly detectable with

HST /FGS, provided a sufficient time baseline for the observations.

2.2.6.2 Spectro-Photometry in the Visible High-precision photometry on stars with known planets on very short orbital periods has been performed by several groups (Char- bonneau 2003, and references therein), and planetary transits have been ruled out for over a dozen hot Jupiters. As the transit probability is PT ' R?/a ' 10% for a planet at a = 0.05

AU across the disk of a Sun-like star, the null results obtained so far on the Doppler-detected planets (except for HD 209458b) is roughly consistent with the expectations, and with the assumption of a uniform distribution of orbital inclinations.

Attempts to detect planets by reflected light have been carried out in a twofold way. Charbonneau et al. (1999) and Leigh et al. (2003a) tried to detect the secondary spectrum of τ Boob directly in the optical, while Collier Cameron et al. (2002) searched υ Andb, and Leigh et al. (2003b) have investigated HD 75289b. This is however a severe challenge (the ratio of the planet-to-star flux is ∼ 10−4 _{− 10}−5 _{in the optical for orbital separations of a}

few milli-arseconds typical of hot Jupiters), and only upper limits on the albedo of these planets have been placed. The other possibility is to detect scattered light curves of hot Jupiters via ultra high-precision photometry. This is very difficult to attain from the ground (Kenworthy & Hinz 2003). Space-borne observatories such as MOST (Walker et al. 2003), Kepler (Jenkins & Doyle 2003), or Corot (Schneider et al. 1998) stand good chances to detect hot Jupiters by this effect.

Follow-up HST transit photometry of HD 209458b by Brown et al. (2001) and Schultz et al. (2004) has provided accurate data on transit timing that allowed them to exclude the presence of large satellites or circumplanetary rings. Even higher precision in transit timing could be achieved by future missions such as Kepler, opening the door to the tantalizing possibility of detecting additional planets in a system with masses as small as 1 M⊕, via

Murray 2005; Agol et al. 2005).

By means of the transmission spectroscopy technique, Charbonneau et al. (2002) de- tected absorption features in the spectrum of HD 209458 due to the presence of sodium in the planet’s atmosphere. Vidal-Madjar et al. (2003,2004) showed that the upper atmosphere of the planet, mostly composed of neutral Hydrogen, also contains Oxygen and Carbon and it is evaporating in the fashion of a cometary tail. From the ground only upper limits have been placed on other atmospheric features of HD 209458b such as He I, CO (e.g., Moutou et al. 2001, 2003; Brown et al. 2002), and Hα (Winn et al. 2004). However, modifications of this technique based on the Rossiter effect (Snellen 2004) could in principle provide the means for actual detections.

2.2.6.3 Infrared Emission Infrared wavelengths offer a far better (at least an order of magnitude) contrast ratio between planet and star than visible light. Lucas & Roche (2002) and Wiedemann et al. (2001) searched for H2O and CH4 in HD 209458b, HD 187123b, 51

Pegb, τ Boob, υ Andb. Richardson et al. (2003a,b) further attempted to detect the thermal emission from HD 209458b by searching for evidence of a secondary eclipse (occultation spectroscopy), placing constraints on H2O and CO features in the planetary atmosphere.

Additional ground-based observations by Deming et al. (2005a) also failed to uncover the presence of Carbon Monoxide, but further constrained plausible models of the planetary atmosphere. However, observations with the Spitzer Space T elescope by Charbonneau et al. (2005) and Deming et al. (2005b) have very recently succeeded in detecting the secondary eclipse of TrES-1 and HD 209458b, respectively. The two results constitute the first direct detection of thermal emission from planets orbiting other stars. The data allow for the first time to obtain direct estimates of the planets’ effective temperature and wavelength- integrated Bond albedo, and the exact time of secondary eclipse (e.g., Charbonneau 2003) for both objects also indicates the lack of any significant orbital eccentricity.

2.2.6.4 Planet-Induced Chromospheric Activity and Radio Emission Cuntz et al. (2000) argued that planet-induced tidal and magnetic effects could show up in stel- lar chromospheric and coronal activity enhancement correlated with orbital phase, the hot

Jupiters being the only good candidates for detection. Saar & Cuntz (2001) searched 7 systems for enhancement of the Ca II triplet, but found none. Shkolnik et al. (2003, 2005) monitored 10 stars harboring close-in planets and detected Ca II emission in H and K in phase with the orbit of the hot Jupiter companions to HD 179949 and υ And.

Finally, searches for cyclotron radio emission from exoplanets are almost 20 years old (Winglee et al. 1986). In fact, long-wavelength radio emission (in our Solar System gas giants arising from their polar regions) scales with planetary mass and inversely with planetary radius, and follows the rotation period (e.g., Farrell et al. 1999; Zarka et al. 2001), so that the radio power from hot Jupiters could exceed Jupiter’s by 3 orders of magnitude. Farrell et al. (2004) have placed upper limits on radio emission from τ Boob, while Bastian et al. (2000) have investigated 7 other systems. Present sensitivities (Lazio et al. 2004;Stevens 2005) are still insufficient to verify the predicted signal levels.

2.3 RENEWED THEORETICAL EFFORTS

After a decade of extrasolar giant planet discoveries, the only idea that has not yet under- gone significant revision or criticism is the paradigmatic statement that planets form within gaseous disks around young T Tauri stars. Many old ideas have been revisited or revived, and a number of completely new ones has been proposed in an attempt to confront and explain the observational data on extrasolar planets. I summarize in this section the main results of serious theoretical investigations aimed at providing an overall, unified picture of how giant planets form, interact with the protoplanetary disk and amongst themselves, and evolve.