Hello,
I'm Bruno Alessi and this is my first post here.
You have a really cool forum - I hope to contribute even if by a very little amount!
Right now, I am wondering what happened to Lalande 21185 and it's
supposed planet (or planets). I know that HST and ground based
observations ruled out the planets that past observers (like
Van de Kamp) claimed to exist around the Barnard star and 61 Cygni.
But to my knowledge nothing was published about Lalande 21185 (besides
what Gatewood has wrote about this star).
So, it seems that there are no independent verification using radial
velocities (or better astrometry... or imaging...) available to confirm
or to rule out planets having the characteristics Gatewood (or Lippincott,
if I recall correctly) determined using astrometry.
Although I know very little of the math and physics involved in the
art of the (exo)planetary science, it seems that with the technology
the top researchers have at their disposal, it would be easy to check
Lal 21185 using RVs to a level of few m.s-1 and jovian planets around
low mass stars would produce a noticeable wobble much larger that the
one meter per second achieved by HARPS, also lal 21185 is nearby and bright.
So...?
May be this discussion is not new here. If this is the case, please excuse me
for not using the search tool adequately!
Bruno
P.S. it is better to be a humble Hydrogen atom than to be a short-lived
neutral neutron, don't you think so?