Seminar

The number of planets and brown dwarfs discovered around K giant stars is already more than 60 and is constantly growing. Are all of these planets indeed real? Most of these planets were discovered using the Doppler method but the interpretation of the radial velocity signal (RV) is not straightforward. In particular, long-period pulsations or rotational modulation of surface features such as stellar spots could mimic a planetary signal, and therefore could not be excluded. In this seminar I will talk about my research, which aims to test whether these planets are real. Using different observational, numerical and data reduction techniques I will show that planets around K giants do exist and they have a broad range of orbital configurations; including multi-planet resonant systems and even planets in compact binary star systems.