EPRV Research Coordination Network
Welcome!
The EPRV Research Coordination Network (RCN), sponsored by NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration Program, aims to support increased communication and collaboration within the radial velocity community as we work towards the goal of obtaining robust mass measurements for Earth analog planets.
Membership is open to the community and we invite participants from all corners of the RV community and related fields, including but not limited to: observational efforts, instrumentation, data analysis techniques, solar studies, and stellar variability mitigation. Please see the side bar for instructions / links on how to join the RCN.
Our next RCN Workshop will take place on June 11th and focus on the synergies between EPRV and Machine Learning. The workshop will take place over Zoom and will consist of three segments: overview talks on EPRV and Machine Learning, science talks on current EPRV research efforts that leverage ML techniques, and a discussion panel on promising future directions in this area.
See below for the full schedule and connection info, which has also been added to the RCN Google calendar. We’ve got a fantastic set of speakers and panelists lined up for this workshop with experts from both the EPRV and ML worlds, so tune in and hear about current efforts and future possibilities
Recordings of previous workshops and colloquia are available via the RCN Google Drive.
Background on the RCN
The 2018 National Academies’ Exoplanet Science Strategy, which provided input to the Astro 2020 Decadal Survey, acknowledged the importance of the radial velocity method “to provide essential mass, orbit, and census information to support both transiting and directly imaged exoplanet science for the foreseeable future” and recommended that “NASA and NSF should establish a strategic initiative in extremely precise radial velocities (EPRV) to develop methods and facilities for measuring the masses of temperate terrestrial planets orbiting Sun-like stars.” Subsequently, a community Extreme Precision Radial Velocity (EPRV) Working Group was chartered, which developed a roadmap for advancing the radial velocity technique to the point where EPRV detection or exclusion of Earth analogs orbiting nearby target stars of a future direct imaging mission would be feasible.
With the Astro2020 Decadal Survey recommendation for NASA to develop a large infrared/optical/ultraviolet space telescope capable of observing and spectrally characterizing potentially habitable exoplanets orbiting nearby stars, development of EPRV capabilities is critical as they will provide the only method potentially capable of discovering Earth analogs from the ground and measuring their masses. As part of its plan to “break the stellar variability barrier” and work towards enabling EPRV surveys capable of measuring the masses of Earth analogs, the EPRV WG report recommended that NASA establish an EPRV Research Coordination Network (RCN) of scientists across disciplines (solar, stellar, exoplanetary) and instruments.“ Thus, the development of this RCN, which endeavors to support the EPRV community in advancing towards the goal of detecting temperate, terrestrial, planets around Sun-like stars.