Collaborators within the Max-Planck Minerva Group on Transiting Extrasolar Planets

The Pan-Planets Project  led by Cristina Afonso (lead) and Thomas Henning (co-lead), with the goal of searching for transiting extrasolar planets, is a key project within the Pan-STARRS1 Consortium. Over 20 scientists of different institutions, such as the MPIA, the University of Hawaii, the Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Harvard, John-Hopkins University, a United Kingdom Consortium of several partners, and the central University of Taiwan, collaborate to make the project a success.

The Wise-MPIA-Goettingen Survey, a search for transiting planets, is a joint project of Cristina Afonso and Thomas Henning from the MPIA with Tsevi Mazeh from the University of Tel Aviv and Stefan Dreizler from the Institute for Astrophysics in Goettingen, Germany.

The MPIA is involved in the HAT-South project, a survey for extrasolar planets with the transit method, in collaboration with Gaspar Bakos (PI of HAT-South), Matthew Holmann, Robert Noyes, and Dimitar Sasselov from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA),  and Penny Sackett from the Mount Stromlo and Siding Spring Observatories, Australia.

Atmospheric Studies of Extrasolar Planets are being undertaken in collaboration with Mark Swain from JPL, Pasadena.

A search for transiting extrasolar planets around M dwarf host stars is being initiated with Holland Ford and Leslie Hebb at St. Andrews University.