Planets around Giant Stars

A. Quirrenbach
ZAH, Landessternwarte Heidelberg

We are conducting a radial-velocity survey of 179 K giants with the Hamilton Echelle 
Spectrograph at Lick Observatory. Giant stars are interesting targets for planet searches, 
as they are typically more massive than G-type main sequence stars; one can thus probe the 
incidence of planets as a function of the host star mass. On the other hand, the atmospheres 
of K giants are less stable, which makes it more difficult to distinguish the signature of 
low-mass companions from atmospheric phenomena. I will present a few examples of bona fide 
planet detections, and draw some preliminary statistical conclusions from our survey.