Who are the people working on discovering extrasolar planets? Do they live near New York? Are there any meetings planned which I could attend?

Hello,
As you probably know, finding Earth-sized planets
is beyond the current technical limit of the
precise radial velocity search being carried out
by Marcy and Butler. They hope to press those limits
down a bit with the Keck telescope.
George Gatewood at Allegheny Observatory believes he can
find smaller planets than the radil velocity searches.
Dr. Gatewood also observes the parent star for motion
due to gravitation tugs by the companion planet, but
his technique looks for motion in the plane of the sky
(transverse motion, rather than radial motion).
Dr. Gatewood is not in the New York area, but he is
a little closer to you - in Pennsylvania. I can give you
his email address: gatewood@vms.cis.pitt.edu. It would
be good to first searchthe web for information on his
technique. Here's a site that I found:
http://www.stsci.edu/stsci/meetings/planets/abs/prog8.html

Once you understand his technique, then it would be
reasonable to email him with some specific questions.

You might also try emailing Paul Butler with some
specific questions. His email address is:
paul@further.berkeley.edu

I don't know of any meetings in the New York area -
there was a good one last summer, but I haven't heard of
anything in the near future on planet searches.
Here's a place to check for some professional meetings:
http://www.aas.org/meetings/meetings.html

NASA often hosts meetings that are open to the public,
and if you are able to travel to someplace like
Goddard (Maryland) you may be able to find something
there.

Best of luck.
Debra Fsicher

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