Related papers: Terrestrial, Habitable-Zone Exoplanet Frequency fr…
In most extrasolar planetary systems, the present orbits of known giant planets admit the existence of stable terrestrial planets. Those same giant planets, however, have typically eccentric orbits that hint at violent early dynamics less…
Discovering and characterizing exoplanets at the outer edge of the transit method's sensitivity has proven challenging owing to geometric biases and the practical difficulties associated with acquiring long observational baselines.…
Exoplanet mass and radius inferences fundamentally rely on host star mass and radius inferences. Despite the importance of host star mass, radius, and elemental abundance inferences for the derivation of exoplanet internal structure…
In this study, we performed a homogeneous analysis of the planets around FGK dwarf stars observed by the Kepler and K2 missions, providing spectroscopic parameters for 310 K2 targets -- including 239 Scaling K2 hosts -- observed with…
Using our K2 Campaign 5 fully automated planet detection data set (43 planets), which has corresponding measures of completeness and reliability, we infer an underlying planet population model for the FGK dwarfs sample (9,257 stars).…
When an extrasolar planet passes in front of its star (transits), its radius can be measured from the decrease in starlight and its orbital period from the time between transits. Multiple planets transiting the same star reveal more: period…
This paper reports the discovery and characterization of the transiting hot giant exoplanet Kepler-17b. The planet has an orbital period of 1.486 days, and radial velocity measurements from the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) show a Doppler…
The eccentricity distribution of exoplanets is known from radial velocity surveys to be divergent from circular orbits beyond 0.1 AU. This is particularly the case for large planets where the radial velocity technique is most sensitive. The…
A large fraction of white dwarfs (WDs) may host planets in their habitable zones. These planets may provide our best chance to detect bio-markers on a transiting exoplanet, thanks to the diminished contrast ratio between the Earth-sized WD…
We examine Kepler light curve variability on habitable zone transit timescales for a large uniform sample of spectroscopically studied Kepler exoplanet host stars. The stars, taken from Everett et al. (2013) are solar-like in their…
We propose a scientific program to complete a census of planets, characterizing their masses, orbital properties, and dynamical histories using continued observations of the Kepler field of view with the Kepler spacecraft in a two reaction…
A re-purposed Kepler mission could continue the search for nearly Earth-sized planets in very short-period (< 1 day) orbits. Recent surveys of the Kepler data already available have revealed at least a dozen such planetary candidates, and a…
The questions of how planets form and how common Earth-like planets are can be addressed by measuring the distribution of exoplanet masses and orbital periods. We report the occurrence rate of close-in planets (with orbital periods less…
Kepler-33 hosts five validated transiting planets ranging in period from 5 to 41 days. The planets are in nearly co-planar orbits and exhibit remarkably similar (appropriately scaled) transit durations indicative of similar impact…
We embark on a detailed study of the lightcurves of Keplers most Earth-like exoplanet host stars using the full length of Kepler data. We derive rotation periods, photometric activity indices, flaring energies, mass loss rates,…
The determination of exoplanet properties and occurrence rates using Kepler data critically depends on our knowledge of the fundamental properties (such as temperature, radius and mass) of the observed stars. We present revised stellar…
We describe statistical methods for measuring the exoplanet multiplicity function - the fraction of host stars containing a given number of planets - from transit and radial-velocity surveys. The analysis is based on the approximation of…
The proposed Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will survey the entire sky to locate the nearest and brightest transiting extrasolar planets with orbital periods up to about 36 days. Here we estimate the number and kind of…
Habitability is usually defined as the requirement for a terrestrial planet's atmosphere to sustain liquid water. This definition can be complemented by the dynamical requirement that other planets in the system do not gravitationally…
Given the very close proximity of their habitable zones, brown dwarfs represent high-value targets in the search for nearby transiting habitable planets that may be suitable for follow-up occultation spectroscopy. In this paper we develop…