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I finished my PhD! My thesis is now available from the Caltech Library or from Lulu.com.

Sleuth News

My PhD thesis is now available from the Caltech Library or from Lulu.com. Having suffered repeated electronic failures after a unexpected rainfall, we have decided to retire Sleuth gracefully. We are grateful to the staff at Palomar Observatory who facilitated the operation of this little telescope that helped discover three transiting exoplanets. We've found the largest known transiting planet, TrES-4! Sleuth bags another transiting planet, TrES-3. Sleuth plays prominant role in the discovery of TrES-2. TrES-2 is the first known transiting planet in the Kepler field and is the most massive nearby transiting planet! Sleuth and the High Performance Wireless Research and Education Network. Sleuth, the Little Telescope That Could. Sleuth braves the elements, surrounded by snow! (see opposite) Sleuth mentioned on NASA's PlanetQuest page. Aerial Photos of Palomar Observatory - Where's Sleuth?! A brief mention of Sleuth and Sherlock in the San Diego Union-Tribune: Palomar Observed. Searching for Transiting Planets and Eliminating False Positives in a TrES Field in Cygnus, presented at the 2005 Aspen Center for Physics Winter Conference on Astrophysics. TrES Network Success: Transiting Planet Discovered! Transits of TrES-1 observered using 10 cm telescope. Sleuth Planet Search Telescope featured in December 2004 National Geographic Further Sleuthing: Candidates from a New Field in Andromeda, presented at the 2004 XVI Canary Islands Winter School of Astrophysics. First Results from Sleuth:The Palomar Planet Finder, presented at the AAS Winter 2004 meeting. Stay tuned for future updates!

Introduction

Sleuth is a dedicated planet-search telescope which was set up by David Charbonneau. Dr. Charbonneau and I are using this automated telescope to search for evidence of transiting extrasolar planets. Sleuth monitors roughly 10,000 stars (brighter than V=12) in a 6 degree square field-of-view for transiting extrasolar gas-giant planets. This planet finder is the third instrument in a network that also contains STARE (located in Tenerife) and PSST (located in northern Arizona). Candidates identified by Sleuth will be observed by our automated follow-up telescope Sherlock to rule out most forms of false positives resulting from eclisping binaries. Sleuth is situated in the 20-inch enclosure at Palomar Observatory (see opposite - click for a larger image). This observatory in northern San Diego County, California is owned and operated by the California Institute of Technology. Please also visit the homepage of STARE.

• Palomar Sky Map.
• Palomar Observing Calendars: Find sunrise and sunset times for Palomar, amongst other variables.
  Also try the U.S. Naval Observatory Sun and Moon Data.
• Moon Phases for 2006.
• 20" Clamshell Enclosure Webcam (Authorized Users Only).
• Variable Star Investigator

Pictures of Sleuth