Media release

From: Macquarie University

A Macquarie University astronomer has helped develop one of the most precise tools ever built for detecting new planets outside our solar system. The NEID spectrometer, a new tool for the discovery of exoplanets, has passed its final NASA review, and is now in full operations at the WIYN 3.5m telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory, Arizona.

Macquarie University’s Dr Christian Schwab led the optical design of the NEID spectrometer. Precision optics in a custom vacuum chamber bring the full light spectrum, spanning from the UV to the near-infrared, into sharp focus on NEID's 81 Megapixel detector.

NEID will discover exoplanets by measuring the minute gravitational tug of these planets on their host star. Even tiny ‘wobbles’ under 25 centimetres per second can be measured by NEID. Jupiter for example induces a 13 meter per second wobble on our Sun, but the Earth induces a wobble of only about 9 centimeters per second.

"We kept tweaking the optics to get the utmost precision, which is crucial to tease out the tiny signals of rocky planets orbiting stars in our solar neighborhood,” says Dr Schwab.

"Seeing a lot of hard work by a great team come together, seeing the spectrograph collect starlight, and produce some of the highest precision spectra we've ever recorded, is really exciting."

The design has now become a blueprint for future instruments - and a small scale copy has recently been installed at Macquarie University's campus observatory, enabling students to observe larger exoplanets as part of their practical training.

“We are proud that NEID is available to the worldwide astronomical community for exoplanet discovery and characterization,” said Jason Wright, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State and NEID project scientist.

“I can't wait to see the results we and our colleagues around the world will produce over the next few years, from discovering new, rocky planets, to measuring the compositions of exoplanetary atmospheres, to measuring the shapes and orientations of planetary orbits, to characterization of the physical processes of these planets' host stars."

John Callas, NN-EXPLORE project manager for NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration Program at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), says “NEID represents the state of the art in Doppler spectroscopy radial velocity detection and characterization of exoplanets.

“NEID will push the existing boundaries for searching for smaller exoplanets, probing beyond the challenges that have limited past generations of RV spectrographs.”

Built as part of a joint NSF and NASA program, NEID’s mission is to enable some of the highest precision measurements currently possible, as well as to attempt to chart a path to the discovery of terrestrial planets around other stars.