Related papers: A Potential Super-Venus in the Kepler-69 System
The recent announcement of a Neptune-sized exomoon candidate orbiting the Jupiter-sized object Kepler-1625b has forced us to rethink our assumptions regarding both exomoons and their host exoplanets. In this paper I describe calculations of…
The effect of the stellar flux on exoplanetary systems is becoming an increasingly important property as more planets are discovered in the Habitable Zone (HZ). The Kepler mission has recently uncovered circumbinary planets with relatively…
Since the discovery of the first exoplanet we have known that other planetary systems can look quite unlike our own. However, until recently we have only been able to probe the upper range of the planet size distribution. The high precision…
A key item of interest for planetary scientists and astronomers is the habitable zone, or the distance from a host star where a terrestrial planet can maintain necessary temperatures in order to retain liquid water on its surface. However,…
Small rocky planets, as well as larger planets that suffered extensive volatile loss, tend to be drier and have thinner atmospheres as compared to Earth. Such planets probably outnumber worlds better endowed with volatiles, being the most…
Results from the Kepler mission indicate that the occurrence rate of small planets ($<3$ $R_\oplus$) in the habitable zone of nearby low-mass stars may be as high as 80%. Despite this abundance, probing the conditions and atmospheric…
Venus and Earth provide astonishingly different views of the evolution of a rocky planet, raising the question of why these two rocky worlds evolved so differently. The recently discovered transiting Super-Earth LP 890-9c (TOI-4306c,…
We simulate a Kepler-like observation of a theoretical exoplanet population and we show that the observed orbital period distribution of the Kepler giant planet candidates is best matched by an average stellar specific dissipation function…
We demonstrate that habitable Earth-mass planets and moons can exist in the Kepler-16 system, known to host a Saturn-mass planet around a stellar binary, by investigating their orbital stability in the standard and extended habitable zone…
The Kepler Mission, combined with ground based radial velocity (RV) follow-up and dynamical analyses of transit timing variations, has revolutionized the observational constraints on sub-Neptune-size planet compositions. The results of an…
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 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…
Detections of massive extrasolar moons are shown feasible with the Kepler space telescope. Kepler's findings of about 50 exoplanets in the stellar habitable zone naturally make us wonder about the habitability of their hypothetical moons.…
Kepler-9 was the first case where transit timing variations have been used to confirm the planets in this system. Following predictions of dramatic TTVs - larger than a week - we re-analyse the system based on the full Kepler data set. We…
The Kepler mission revealed a class of planets known as ''super-puffs,'' with masses only a few times larger than Earth's but radii larger than Neptune, giving them very low mean densities. All three of the known planets orbiting the young…
The search for habitable planets has revealed many planets that can vary greatly from an Earth analog environment. These include highly eccentric orbits, giant planets, different bulk densities, relatively active stars, and evolved stars.…
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…
Since the discovery of the first extrasolar giant planets around Sun-like stars, evolving observational capabilities have brought us closer to the detection of true Earth analogues. The size of an exoplanet can be determined when it…
The discovery of terrestrial exoplanets is uncovering increasingly diverse architectures. Of particular interest are those systems that contain exoplanets at a variety of star-planet separations, allowing direct comparison of exoplanet…
A key goal of the Kepler mission is the discovery of Earth-size transiting planets in "habitable zones" where stellar irradiance maintains a temperate climate on an Earth-like planet. Robust estimates of planet radius and irradiance require…