J/A+A/505/859 M dwarfs radial velocities (Zechmeister+, 2009) ================================================================================ The M dwarf planet search programme at the ESO VLT + UVES. A search for terrestrial planets in the habitable zone of M dwarfs. Zechmeister M., Kuerster M., Endl M. =2009A&A...505..859Z ================================================================================ ADC_Keywords: Stars, M-type ; Stars, dwarfs ; Radial velocities Keywords: stars: general - stars: planetary systems - techniques: radial velocities Description: We present radial velocity (RV) measurements of our sample of 40 M dwarfs from our planet search programme with VLT+UVES begun in 2000. Although with our RV precision down to 2-2.5m/s and timebase line of up to 7 years we are capable of finding planets of few Earth masses in the close-in habitable zones of M dwarfs, there is no detection of a planetary companion. To demonstrate this we present mass detection limits allowing us to exclude Jupiter mass planets up to 1AU for most of our sample stars. We identified 6 M dwarfs that host a brown dwarf or low mass stellar companion. With the exception of these, all other sample stars show low RV variability with an rms <20m/s. Some high proper motion stars exhibit a linear RV trend consistent with their secular acceleration. Furthermore, we examine our data sets for a possible correlation between RVs and stellar activity as seen in variations of the Halpha line strength. For Barnard's star we found a significant anticorrelation, but most of the sample stars do not show such a correlation. File Summary: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FileName Lrecl Records Explanations -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ReadMe 80 . This file targets.dat 136 41 Targets rv/* . 41 Individual RV and error bars -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Byte-by-byte Description of file: targets.dat -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bytes Format Units Label Explanations -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1- 8 A8 --- Name Star name 9- 16 A8 --- OName Other name 18- 19 I2 --- N Number of measurements 21- 24 I4 d T Time baseline 26- 31 F6.1 m/s sigma Radial velocity scatter 33- 36 F4.1 m/s Mean radial velocity measurement error 38- 46 A9 --- Com Comment 48- 54 A7 --- SpType MK spectral type 56- 60 F5.2 mag Vmag V magnitude 62- 67 F6.2 pc d Heliocentric distance (1) 69- 72 F4.2 solMass Mass Stellar mass (2) 74- 81 F8.2 mas/yr pmRA Proper motion along RA 83- 86 F4.2 mas/yr e_pmRA rms uncertainty on pmRA 88- 95 F8.2 mas/yr pmDE Proper motion along DE 97-100 F4.2 mas/yr e_pmDE rms uncertainty on pmDE 102-107 F6.2 mas plx Parallax (1) 109-112 F4.2 mas e_plx rms uncertainty on plx 114-118 F5.3 m/s/yr SA Secular acceleration (d(RV(t))/dt) 120-124 F5.3 m/s/yr e_SA rms uncertainty on SA 126-136 A11 --- FileName Name of the file with radial velocity measurements in "rv" subdirectory -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note (1): From Hipparcos, van Leuuwen, 2007A&A...474..653V, Cat. Note (2): Stellar mass derived from the K-band mass-luminosity relation by Delfosse (2000A&A...364..217D) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Byte-by-byte Description of file: rv/* -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bytes Format Units Label Explanations -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1- 14 F14.6 d BJD Barycentric Julian date 16- 23 F8.2 m/s RV Differential radial velocity (1) 25- 30 F6.2 m/s e_RV Uncertainty on RV -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note (1): RV is not corrected for the secular acceleration. See the paper or the summary table (targets.dat) for the correction values derived from Hipparcos parallax and proper motion. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Acknowledgements: Mathias Zechmeister, zechmeister(at)mpia.de ================================================================================ (End) Zechmeister [MPIA, Germany], Patricia Vannier [CDS] 14-Jul-2009