Doppler Tomography using the Miniature Exoplanet Radial Velocity Array (MINERVA)

MINERVA is a robotic dedicated exoplanet observatory located at Mt. Hopkins, AZ. The array is composed of four 0.7m telescopes that fiber feed into a single high-resolution spectrograph. Our main science goal is radial velocity follow-up of TESS Objects of Interest, with a strong emphasis on Doppler Tomography (DT) observations. DT observations yield a valuable measurement of obliquity: the alignment between the stellar spin axis and the planet’s orbital axis. We estimate that MINERVA will be able to precisely measure obliquities for ~75 TESS planets, approximately doubling the number of systems with well-known obliquities. This data will provide important new insights on the mechanisms by which planets form and migrate.