MISHAPS: Measuring the Occurrence Rates of Hot Jupiters in the Alpha-Rich Galactic Bulge

The Multiband Imaging Survey for High-Alpha PlanetS (MISHAPS) is a 3-year NOAO Survey Program to search for hot Jupiters in the Galactic bulge and measure their occurrence rates. Giant planet occurrence rates are known to be strongly correlated with host metallicity, but understanding which elements cause this correlation is extremely challenging. This is because most planet searches are restricted to thin disk stars, which have tight chemical evolution trends, in particular a strong correlation between alpha element abundance ([alpha/Fe]) and metallicity ([Fe/H]). Bulge stars, with a different formation history, have higher alpha element abundances at fixed metallicity than thin disk stars, so can break the degeneracy imposed by the thin disk trends. Therefore a search for planets in the bulge offers an opportunity to measure the relative importance of alpha elements (such as oxygen) versus iron peak elements in setting hot Jupiter occurrence rates. In this talk I will describe the MISHAPS survey, its methods, its goals, its expected yield of hundreds of hot Jupiters, and the details of the first public data release which is scheduled for the end of 2019.