Detection Limits from the McDonald Observatory Planet Search Program
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Based on the long-term radial velocity surveys carried out with the McDonald Observatory 2.7 m Harlan J. Smith Telescope from 1988 to the present, we derive upper limits to long-period giant planet companions for 31 nearby stars. Data from three phases of the McDonald Observatory 2.7 m planet-search program have been merged together, and for 17 objects data from the pioneering Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope radial velocity program have also been included in the companion-limits determination. For those 17 objects, the baseline of observations is in excess of 23 yr, enabling the detection or exclusion of giant planets in orbits beyond 8 AU. We also consider the possibility of eccentric orbits in our computations. At an orbital separation of 5.2 AU, we can exclude on average planets of M sin i ≳ M J ( e = 0) and M sin i ≳ M J ( e = 0.6) for 25 of the 31 stars in this survey. However, we are not yet able to rule out "true Jupiters," i.e., planets of M sin i ∼ 1 M J in 5.2 AU orbits. These limits are of interest for the Space Interferometry Mission , Terrestrial Planet Finder , and Darwin missions, which will search for terrestrial planets orbiting nearby stars, many of which are included in this work.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".