Christoph Bergmann

• PhD (Astronomy)
• Researcher at German Aerospace Center (DLR) Oberpfaffenhofen

As part of an ongoing effort to build and maintain a data base for Space Situational Awareness, we have been developing an algorithm that employs a non-linear Kalman Filter to detect satellite manoeuvres. This methodology works directly on the astrometric angle measurements derived from passive-optical telescope observations without the need to run...

We present 63 new multi-site radial velocity (RV) measurements of the K1III giant HD 76920, which was recently reported to host the most eccentric planet known to orbit an evolved star. We focused our observational efforts on the time around the predicted periastron passage and achieved near-continuous phase coverage of the corresponding RV peak. B...

We present our approach to automatically detect and characterize satellite manoeuvres during the orbit de termination (OD) process, based on passive-optical measurements of several geostationary (GEO) satellites from the SMARTnet telescope network [4]. Our technique employs a nonlinear Kalman filter (either an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) or an Uns...

We present 63 new multi-site radial velocity measurements of the K1III giant HD 76920, which was recently reported to host the most eccentric planet known to orbit an evolved star. We focussed our observational efforts on the time around the predicted periastron passage and achieved near-continuous phase coverage of the corresponding radial velocit...

2020. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. We report the discovery of TOI 837b and its validation as a transiting planet. We characterize the system using data from the NASA Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite mission, the ESA Gaia mission, ground-based photometry from El Sauce and ASTEP400, and spectroscopy from CHIRON, FEROS,...

We report the discovery of TOI 837b and its validation as a transiting planet. We characterize the system using data from the NASA TESS mission, the ESA Gaia mission, ground-based photometry from El Sauce and ASTEP400, and spectroscopy from CHIRON, FEROS, and Veloce. We find that TOI 837 is a $T=9.9$ mag G0/F9 dwarf in the southern open cluster IC...

Asteroseismology probes the internal structures of stars by using their natural pulsation frequencies¹. It relies on identifying sequences of pulsation modes that can be compared with theoretical models, which has been done successfully for many classes of pulsators, including low-mass solar-type stars², red giants³, high-mass stars⁴ and white dwar...

Asteroseismology is a powerful tool for probing the internal structures of stars by using their natural pulsation frequencies. It relies on identifying sequences of pulsation modes that can be compared with theoretical models, which has been done successfully for many classes of pulsators, including low-mass solar-type stars, red giants, high-mass...

2019. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.. We present the discovery of HD 221416 b, the first transiting planet identified by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) for which asteroseismology of the host star is possible. HD 221416 b (HIP 116158, TOI-197) is a bright (V = 8.2 mag), spectroscopically classified subgiant...

When, in the course of searching for exoplanets, sparse sampling and noisy data make it necessary to disentangle possible solutions to the observations, one must consider the possibility that what appears to be a single eccentric Keplerian signal may in reality be attributed to two planets in near-circular orbits. There is precedent in the literatu...

When, in the course of searching for exoplanets, sparse sampling and noisy data make it necessary to disentangle possible solutions to the observations, one must consider the possibility that what appears to be a single eccentric Keplerian signal may in reality be attributed to two planets in near-circular orbits. There is precedent in the literatu...

We present the discovery of TOI-197.01, the first transiting planet identified by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) for which asteroseismology of the host star is possible. TOI-197 (HIP116158) is a bright (V=8.2 mag), spectroscopically classified subgiant which oscillates with an average frequency of about 430 muHz and displays a cle...

We present the discovery of TOI-197.01, the first transiting planet identified by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) for which asteroseismology of the host star is possible. TOI-197 (HIP116158) is a bright (V=8.2 mag), spectroscopically classified subgiant which oscillates with an average frequency of about 430 muHz and displays a cle...

Veloce is an ultra-stable fibre-fed R4 echelle spectrograph for the 3.9 m Anglo-Australian Telescope. The first channel to be commissioned, Veloce 'Rosso', utilises multiple low-cost design innovations to obtain Doppler velocities for Sun-like and M-dwarf stars at <1 m/s precision. The spectrograph has an asymmetric white-pupil format with a 100-mm...

We report 1212 radial-velocity (RV) measurements obtained in the years 2009-2013 using an iodine cell for the spectroscopic binary ν Octantis (K1III/IV). This system (abin ∼ 2.6 au, P ∼ 1050 days) is conjectured to have a Jovian planet with a semi-major axis half that of the binary host. The extreme geometry only permits long-term stability if the...

We report 1212 radial-velocity (RV) measurements obtained in the years 2009-2013 using an iodine cell for the spectroscopic binary nu Octantis (K1III/IV). This system (a_bin~2.6 au, P~1050 days) is conjectured to have a Jovian planet with a semi-major axis half that of the binary host. The extreme geometry only permits long-term stability if the pl...

We report a new giant planet orbiting the K giant HD 155233, as well as four stellar-mass companions from the Pan-Pacific Planet Search, a southern hemisphere radial velocity survey for planets orbiting nearby giants and subgiants. We also present updated velocities and a refined orbit for HD 47205b (7 CMa b), the first planet discovered by this su...

For the last five years we have been undertaking an extensive observational campaign that aims to detect terrestrial planets in our neighboring star system α Centauri using the Doppler method. The most challenging problem we have encountered in reducing the observations is the spectral cross-contamination from the other star owing to the small angu...

(abridged) We have obtained precise radial velocities for a sample of 373 G and K type giants at Lick Observatory regularly over more than 12 years. Planets have been identified around 15 giant stars; an additional 20 giant stars host planet candidates. We investigate the occurrence rate of substellar companions around giant stars as a function of...

This work is part of an ongoing project which aims to detect terrestrial planets in our neighbouring star system $\alpha$ Centauri using the Doppler method. Owing to the small angular separation between the two components of the $\alpha$ Cen AB binary system, the observations will to some extent be contaminated with light coming from the other star...

We review the possible formation and orbital stability of Earth-mass or super Earth-mass planets around either of the stars Alpha Centauri A or B and describe a program at Mt John University Observatory using the Doppler method that aims to detect such planets. From New Zealand, we are able to observe the Alpha Centauri system year-round. This is c...

The "holy grail" in planet hunting is the detection of an Earth-analog: a planet with similar mass as the Earth and an orbit inside the habitable zone. If we can find such an Earth-analog around one of the stars in the immediate solar neighborhood, we could potentially even study it in such great detail to address the question of its potential habi...

We present results from a radial-velocity survey of 373 giant stars at Lick Observatory, which started in 1999. The previously announced planets iota Dra b and Pollux b are confirmed by continued monitoring. The frequency of detected planetary companions appears to increase with metallicity. The star nu Oph is orbited by two brown dwarf companions...

Most of the known transiting exoplanets are in short-period orbits, largely due to the bias inherent in detecting planets through the transit technique. However, the eccentricity distribution of the known radial velocity planets results in many of those planets having a non-negligible transit probability. One such case is the massive planet orbitin...