I am the Project Scientist for the Habitable-zone Planet Finder (HPF) Spectrograph. The spectrograph entered full science operations in December 2018, and has consistently produced infrared radial velocity measurements with a world-class instrumental precision near 1 meter per second.
HPF commissioning RVs of Barnard’s star, from Metcalf et al. 2019. HPF’s 1 meter per second instrumental precision is unprecedented for an infrared spectrometer
Our HPF team is surveying nearby M stars in the near infrared (where cool stars are brighter) for radial velocity signatures of low-mass, potentially habitable exoplanets. This survey is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation. You can read about the spectrograph’s development, and get all the latest HPF science updates on the HPF blog.
Robertson (at left), with engineer Eric Levi and project manager Fred Hearty, installing HPF electronics.
My contributions to HPF’s instrumental development were related to the design and implementation of the instrument’s environment control system, or ECS. In order to achieve the measurement precision required to detect Earth-mass exoplanets, HPF’s temperature and pressure must be controlled to an unprecedented degree.
As shown in the figure below, the HPF ECS is now complete, and performing to better than the project’s goal of 1 milliKelvin long-term stability. The full results of the system are described in Stefánsson, Hearty, Robertson et al. (2016; see my publications).
Results from the HPF cold-temperature stability test. Our environment control system enables sub-milliKelvin stability over long periods of time.