Related papers: Two Earth-sized planets orbiting Kepler-20

One core goal of the Kepler mission was to determine the frequency of Earth-like planets that orbit Sun-like stars. Accurately estimating this planet occurrence rate requires both a well-vetted list of planets and a clear understanding of…

The terrestrial and gas-giant planets in our solar system may represent some prototypes for planets around other stars; the exoplanets because most stars have similar overall elemental abundances as our sun. The solar system planets…

We analyze the effect of companion stars on the bulk density of 29 planets orbiting 15 stars in the Kepler field. These stars have at least one stellar companion within 2", and the planets have measured masses and radii, allowing an…

The Kepler Mission is monitoring the brightness of ~150,000 stars searching for evidence of planetary transits. As part of the "Hunt for Exomoons with Kepler" (HEK) project, we report a planetary system with two confirmed planets and one…

We recommend an intensive effort to survey and understand the obliquity distribution of small close-in extrasolar planets over the coming decade. The orbital obliquities of exoplanets--i.e., the relative orientation between the planetary…

We report the discovery and confirmation of Kepler-7b, a transiting planet with unusually low density. The mass is less than half that of Jupiter, Mp = 0.43 Mj, but the radius is fifty percent larger, Rp = 1.48 Rj. The resulting density,…

We analyze the transit timing variations obtained by the Kepler mission for 22 sub-jovian planet pairs (17 published, 5 new) that lie close to mean motion resonances. We find that the TTV phases for most of these pairs lie close to zero,…

The Kepler space telescope was responsible for the discovery of over 2,700 confirmed exoplanets, more than half of the total number of exoplanets known today. These discoveries took place during both Kepler's primary mission, when it spent…

Doppler planet searches revealed that many giant planets orbit close to their host star or in highly eccentric orbits. These and subsequent observations inspired new theories of planet formation that invoke gravitation interactions in…

Transiting planets have greatly expanded and diversified the exoplanet field. These planets provide greater access to characterization of exoplanet atmospheres and structure. The Kepler mission has been particularly successful in expanding…

We present the discovery of the Kepler-19 planetary system, which we first identified from a 9.3-day periodic transit signal in the Kepler photometry. From high-resolution spectroscopy of the star, we find a stellar effective temperature…

Giant planets orbiting stars other than the Sun are clearly detectable through precise radial-velocity measurements of the orbital reflex motion of the parent star. In the four years since the discovery of the companion to the star 51 Peg,…

High contrast direct imaging of exoplanets can provide many important observables, including measurements of the orbit, spectra that probe the lower layers of the atmosphere, and phase variations of the planet, but cannot directly measure…

Circumbinary planets are generally more likely to transit than equivalent single-star planets, but practically the geometry and orbital dynamics of circumbinary planets make the chance of observing a transit inherently time-dependent. In…

Analyses of exoplanet statistics suggest a trend of giant planet occurrence with host star mass, a clue to how planets like Jupiter form. One missing piece of the puzzle is the occurrence around late K dwarf stars (masses of 0.5-0.75Msun…

We constrain the densities of Earth- to Neptune-size planets around very cool (Te =3660-4660K) Kepler stars by comparing 1202 Keck/HIRES radial velocity measurements of 150 nearby stars to a model based on Kepler candidate planet radii and…

We have established precise planet radii, semimajor axes, incident stellar fluxes, and stellar masses for 909 planets in 355 multi-planet systems discovered by Kepler. In this sample, we find that planets within a single multi-planet system…

One focus of modern astronomy is to detect temperate terrestrial exoplanets well-suited for atmospheric characterisation. A milestone was recently achieved with the detection of three Earth-sized planets transiting (i.e. passing in front…

Recent astronomical observations obtained with the Kepler and TESS missions and their related ground-based follow-ups revealed an abundance of exoplanets with a size intermediate between Earth and Neptune. A low occurrence rate of planets…

Approximately half of the extrasolar planets (exoplanets) with radii less than four Earth radii are in orbits with short periods. Despite their sheer abundance, the compositions of such planets are largely unknown. The available evidence…