Rosanne Di Stefano, James Matthews, Sebastien Lepine
The successful prediction of lensing events is a new and exciting enterprise
that provides opportunities to discover and study planetary systems. The
companion paper investigates the underlying theory. This paper is devoted to
outlining the components of observing programs that can discover planets
orbiting stars predicted to make a close approach to a background star. If the
time and distance of closest approach can be well predicted, then the system
can be targeted for individual study. In most cases, however, the predictions
will be imprecise, yielding only a set of probable paths of approach and event
times. We must monitor an ensemble of such systems to ensure discovery, a
strategy possible with observing programs similar to a number of current
surveys, including PTF and Pan-STARRS; nova searches, including those conducted
by amateurs; ongoing lensing programs such as MOA and OGLE; as well as MEarth,
Kepler and other transit studies. If well designed, the monitoring programs
will be guaranteed to either discover planets in orbits with semi-major axes
smaller than about two Einstein radii, or else to rule out their presence.
Planets on wider orbits may not all be discovered, but if they are common, will
be found among the events generated by ensembles of potential lenses. We
consider the implications for VB 10, the first star to make a predicted
approach to a background star that is close enough to allow planets to be
discovered. VB 10 is not an ideal case, but it is well worth studying. A more
concise summary of this work, and information for observers can be found at
https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~jmatthews/vb10.html.
View original:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1202.5314
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