Tarter J C, Black D C, Billingham J
UC Berkeley Astronomy Department, Los Altos, USA.
Acta Astronaut. 1986;14:253-66. doi: 10.1016/0094-5765(86)90127-x.
Anyone undertaking an interstellar voyage might wish to be assured of the existence of a safe planetary harbor at the other end! Aside from the obvious interest of the participants in this Symposium, astronomers and astrophysicists are also eager to detect and study other planetary systems in order to better understand the formation of our own Solar System. Scientists involved in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence argue that planets suitable for the evolution of life may abound elsewhere within our own Milky Way Galaxy. On theoretical grounds, they are probably correct, but they lack any observational support. For in spite of decades of claimed astrometric detections of planetary companions and the recent exciting and tantalizing observations from the IRAS satellite and the IR speckle observations of Van Biesbroeck 8 and other cool stars, there is no unambiguous proof for the existence of another planetary system beyond our own. In this paper we review the various methods for detecting extrasolar planets and briefly describe the Earth and space based technology currently available and discuss the near-term plans to implement these different search techniques. In each case an attempt is made to identify the limiting source of systematic error inherent to the methodology and to assess the potential for technological improvements.
任何进行星际航行的人可能都希望确保在旅程终点有一个安全的行星港湾！除了本次研讨会参与者的明显兴趣之外，天文学家和天体物理学家也渴望探测和研究其他行星系统，以便更好地理解我们自己太阳系的形成。参与寻找外星智慧生命的科学家认为，适合生命演化的行星可能在我们银河系的其他地方大量存在。从理论上讲，他们可能是正确的，但他们缺乏任何观测支持。尽管几十年来一直声称通过天体测量法探测到了行星伴星，以及最近红外天文卫星（IRAS）令人兴奋且诱人的观测结果，还有范·比斯布罗克8号及其他冷恒星的红外散斑观测结果，但仍没有确凿证据证明在我们太阳系之外还存在另一个行星系统。在本文中，我们回顾了探测太阳系外行星的各种方法，简要描述了目前可用的基于地球和太空的技术，并讨论了实施这些不同搜索技术的近期计划。在每种情况下，我们都试图确定该方法固有的系统误差的限制来源，并评估技术改进的潜力。
