The MEarth project: searching for transiting habitable super-Earths around nearby M-dwarfs

Due to their small radii, M-dwarfs are very promising targets to search for transiting super-Earths, with a planet of 2 Earth radii orbiting an M5 dwarf in the habitable zone giving rise to a 0.5% photometric signal, with a period of two weeks. This can be detected from the ground using modest-aperture telescopes by targeting samples of nearby M-dwarfs. Such planets would be very amenable to follow-up studies due to the brightness of the parent stars, and the favourable planet-star flux ratio. MEarth is such a transit survey of ~2000 nearby M-dwarfs. Since the targets are distributed over the entire (Northern) sky, it is necessary to observe them individually, which will be done by using 8 independent 0.4m robotic telescopes, two of which have been in operation since December 2007 at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory (FLWO) located on Mount Hopkins, Arizona. We discuss the survey design and hardware, and report on the current status of the survey, and preliminary results obtained from the commissioning data.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures. To appear in the Proceedings of the 253rd IAU Symposium: "Transiting Planets", May 2008, Cambridge, M

HST Observations and Models of The Gravitational Lens System MG 0414+0534

Quadruple gravitational lens systems offer the possibility of measuring time delays for image pairs, microlensing effects, and extinction in distant galaxies. Observations of these systems may be used to obtain estimates of H_o and to study the various mass components of lens galaxies at high redshifts. With HST, we have observed the reddest known gravitational lens system, MG 0414+0534. We used WFPC2/PC1 to obtain deep, high-resolution images with two filters, F675W and F814W. We present a detailed analysis of all of the components, as well as macrolens models. Our main results are: (1) confirmation that MG 0414+0534 is inescapably a gravitational lens system; (2) discovery of a blue arc connecting the 3 brightest images of the QSO central core; (3) accurate positions and apparent brightnesses for all 4 known images of the QSO central core and for the lens galaxy G; (4) a good representation of the brightness distribution of G by elliptical isophotes with a De Vaucouleurs profile, characteristic of an elliptical galaxy; (5) models that consist of simple elliptical potentials and account qualitatively, not quantitatively, for the HST image positions, arc morphology and radio flux ratios for the images of the QSO central core; (6) a possible new test to distinguish between reddening in the host galaxy of the QSO and in the lens galaxy, based on future accurate measurements of spatial variations in the color of the arc; and (7) the suggestion that microlensing is a plausible cause for the differences between the radio and optical flux ratios for the brightest images, A1 and A2. Further observations and measurements such as of the redshift of the lens galaxy, can be used fruitfully to study microlensing for this system.Comment: 27 pages, 8 .ps figs, AAS Latex, AJ, in press, Feb 199

Light versus dark in strong-lens galaxies: Dark matter haloes that are rounder than their stars

We measure the projected density profile, shape and alignment of the stellar and dark matter mass distribution in 11 strong-lens galaxies. We find that the projected dark matter density profile - under the assumption of a Chabrier stellar initial mass function - shows significant variation from galaxy to galaxy. Those with an outermost image beyond $\sim 10$ kpc are very well fit by a projected NFW profile; those with images within 10 kpc appear to be more concentrated than NFW, as expected if their dark haloes contract due to baryonic cooling. We find that over several half-light radii, the dark matter haloes of these lenses are rounder than their stellar mass distributions. While the haloes are never more elliptical than $e_{dm} = 0.2$, their stars can extend to $e_* > 0.2$. Galaxies with high dark matter ellipticity and weak external shear show strong alignment between light and dark; those with strong shear ($\gamma \gtrsim 0.1$) can be highly misaligned. This is reassuring since isolated misaligned galaxies are expected to be unstable. Our results provide a new constraint on galaxy formation models. For a given cosmology, these must explain the origin of both very round dark matter haloes and misaligned strong-lens systems.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures, 4 tables. Accepted for publication by MNRA

Resolving the baryon-fraction profile in lensing galaxies

We show the radial dependence of stellar baryon fraction curves derived for 21 lensing galaxies from the CfA-Arizona Space Telescope LEns Survey by means of stellar population synthesis and pixel-based mass reconstruction. The sample covers a stellar mass range of Ms~2x10^9-3x10^11 Msol (solar masses) which corresponds to a total mass range of ML~7x10^9-3x10^12 Msol on scales from 0.25 to 5 Re (effective radii). By examining the Ms-to-ML dependence on radial distance to the center of each galaxy we find pairs of lenses on small to intermediate mass scales which approach at large radii the same values for their enclosed total mass but exhibit very different stellar masses and stellar baryon fractions. This behaviour subsides for the most massive lenses. All baryon fraction profiles show that the dark matter halo overtakes the stellar content between 1.5 and 2.5 Re. We find evidence for a stellar baryon fraction steadily declining over the full mass range. We shed light on the Fundamental Plane puzzle by showing that the slope of the ML(<R)-to-Ms(<R) relation approaches the mass-to-light relation of recent Fundamental Plane studies at large radii. Less massive dark matter halos turn out to be influenced by the distribution of stellar matter on resolved scales below 10 kpc. The ongoing study of resolved baryon fraction profiles will make it possible to evaluate the validity of star formation models as well as adiabatic contraction prescriptions commonly used in simulations. [abridged]Comment: 21 pages, 16 figures, 2 tables, 1 ancillary file, accepted for publication in Ap