Radial Velocity Planet Resources in the Exoplanet Archive

This page describes the resources available in the Exoplanet Archive for planets discovered using the radial velocity (RV) technique.

Technique Overview

The radial velocity (RV) method (sometimes referred to as the "Doppler wobble" method) is an indirect method for detecting exoplanets which depends on measuring the small reflex motion of a star caused by an exoplanet companion as the two orbit their common center of gravity. Since the star is so much more massive than the planet, this reflex motion is very small, typically on the order of a few to hundreds of meters per second. The motion is detected using high-resolution spectroscopy to measure tiny Doppler shifts in the stellar spectrum toward the blue or red as the star changes its velocity along the line of sight, yielding information on the mass of the planet and its orbital period and eccentricity. Reviews of the method can be found in Radial Velocity by Lovis & Fischer.

Confirmed Planets

Planets discovered via the transit method which meet the Archive's exoplanet criteria are included in the Planetary Systems Table.

  • To see only the planets discovered by the RV method, enter Radial Velocity in the filter box under Discovery Method.
  • Often planets will be followed up with RV observations after being discovered by alternate methods (e.g. the transit method). To see all planets with detected RV signals:
    1. click the Select Columns button and scroll to the Detections menu.
    2. Check Detected by Radial Velocity Variations.
    3. Click Update and close the pop-up box.
    4. Find the Detected by Radial Velocity Variations and enter 1 in the filter box to recover the full list of RV-detected planets.
The count of RV-discovered planets is available on the Exoplanet and Candidate Statistics page. (Note that clicking on Radial Velocity in the Confirmed Exoplanets Statistics table takes you to the Planetary Systems Table with that filter already applied.)

Contributed Data

A complete overview of all the available community-contributed data in the archive, including RV data, is given in the Contributed Data Sets documentation page.

We have worked with J. Wright's group at Penn State to include radial velocity time series from the published literature. A wget script for these files is available from the Bulk Data Download page, listed in the Time Series Data table.

Additionally, we offer the RV curves obtained by the MARVELS team described in Thomas et al. 2016. The full data set is in this .tar file.

Individual RV files are also available from the Overview pages for the relevant stars. Instructions on how to access these for an individual object are here.

Available Tools for RV Planets

Periodogram: This service allows users to extract periodic signals from light curves hosted by the Exoplanet Archive, or uploaded by the user. There are currently three algorithms that are supported by the Periodogram service: Lomb-Scargle, Box-fitting Least Squares (BLS) and Plavchan. The light curve can then be viewed, phased at the detected periodic signals.

Transit and Ephemeris Predictor Service: This service is a planning tool for astronomers who want to know when scientific events, such as transits and orbital phase quadrature, will be happening, and when and where they can be observed. Ephemerides are provided by the Exoplanet Archive, or custom values can be supplied by the user. Ground-based and space-based observatory locations are supported.

Additional Links



Last updated 27 April 2021