NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF) have established the NASA-NSF Exoplanet Observational Research (NN-Explore) partnership to support community exoplanet research. The NN-Explore program was created in response to the community need for observational resources for exoplanet discovery and characterization. Through the NN-Explore partnership, time is made available for exoplanet confirmation and characterization, in particular for TESS planetary candidates. There are multiple resources available to the community through this partnership; more information on how to apply for time through the NN-Explore Program can be found in the NOIRLab Call for Proposals.
The cornerstone of the NN-Explore Program is the NASA partnership with the WIYN Telescope, located at Kitt Peak Observatory. The premiere instrument on the telescope is NEID, which is a high-resolution spectrometer capable of radial velocity precisions of 30 cm/s. The NEID Data Archive is operated by NExScI. Also available on WIYN is the high-spatial-resolution optical speckle imager NN-Explore Exoplanet Stellar Speckle Imager (NESSI). Other instruments available to the community include WHIRC, Hydra, and ODI.
CHIRON is located on the SMARTS 1.5m telescope at the Cerro-Tololo Observatory CHIRON is a fiber-fed, high-resolution spectrometer capable of radial velocity precisions of a few meters per second. Through the NOIRLab partnership in the SMARTS consortium,
A more complete description of CHIRON and its capabilities can be found here.
(last updated March 31st, 2025 11:40:49)
The NASA Exoplanet Science Institute is operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program.
