Related papers: An ancient extrasolar system with five sub-Earth-s…
Kepler has found hundreds of Neptune-size (2-6 R_Earth) planet candidates within 0.5 AU of their stars. The nature of the vast majority of these planets is not known because their masses have not been measured. Using theoretical models of…
Massive cores of the giant planets are thought to have formed in a gas disk by accretion of pebble-size particles whose accretional cross-section is enhanced by aerodynamic gas drag [1][2]. A commonly held view is that the terrestrial…
CONTEXT. Exoplanet searches have demonstrated that giant planets are preferentially found around metal-rich stars and that their fraction increases with the stellar mass. AIMS. During the past six years, we have conducted a radial velocity…
There is growing evidence from stellar kinematics and galactic chemical evolution (GCE) suggesting that giant planets (M$_{P}\geq$0.3$M_{J}$) are relatively young compared to the most commonly occurring population of small planets (M$_{P}…
Results on the obliquity of exoplanet host stars -- the angle between the stellar spin axis and the planetary orbital axis -- provide important diagnostic information for theories describing planetary formation. Here we present the first…
Kepler-93b is a 1.478 +/- 0.019 Earth radius planet with a 4.7 day period around a bright (V=10.2), astroseismically-characterized host star with a mass of 0.911+/-0.033 solar masses and a radius of 0.919+/-0.011 solar radii. Based on 86…
We announce the discovery of a planetary system with 7 transiting planets around a Kepler target, a current record for transiting systems. Planets b, c, e and f are reported for the first time in this work. Planets d, g and h were…
The limited completeness of the Kepler sample for planets with orbital periods $\gtrsim$ 1 yr leaves open the possibility that exoplanetary systems may host undetected giant planets. Should such planets exist, their dynamical interactions…
Kepler-20 is a solar-type star (V = 12.5) hosting a compact system of five transiting planets, all packed within the orbital distance of Mercury in our own Solar System. A transition from rocky to gaseous planets with a planetary transition…
Metal-poor stars provide the fossil record of Galactic chemical evolution and the nucleosynthesis processes that took place at the earliest times in the history of our Galaxy. From detailed abundance studies of low mass, extremely…
We use the optical and near-infrared photometry from the Kepler Input Catalog to provide improved estimates of the stellar characteristics of the smallest stars in the Kepler target list. We find 3897 dwarfs with temperatures below 4000K,…
Since the launch of the Kepler space telescope in 2009 and the subsequent K2 mission, hundreds of multi-planet systems have been discovered. The study of such systems, both as individual systems and as a population, leads to a better…
We classified the reddest ($r-J>2.2$) stars observed by the NASA $Kepler$ mission into main sequence dwarf or evolved giant stars and determined the properties of 4216 M dwarfs based on a comparison of available photometry with that of…
Thousands of confirmed and candidate exoplanets have been identified in recent years. Consequently, theoretical research on the formation and dynamical evolution of planetary systems has seen a boost, and the processes of planet-planet…
Some systems of close-in "super-Earths" contain five or more planets on non-resonant but compact and nearly coplanar orbits. The Kepler-11 system is an iconic representative of this class of system. It is challenging to explain their…
We combine a semi-analytic model of galaxy evolution with constraints on circumstellar habitable zones and the distribution of terrestrial planets to probe the suitability of galaxies of different mass and type to host habitable planets,…
The search for habitable planets like Earth around other stars fulfils an ancient imperative to understand our origins and place in the cosmos. The past decade has seen the discovery of hundreds of planets, but nearly all are gas giants…
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…
We devise and exploit a data-driven, semi-empirical framework of galaxy formation and evolution, coupling it to recipes for planet formation from stellar and planetary science, to compute the cosmic planet formation rate, and the properties…
We investigated the underlying architecture of planetary systems by deriving the distribution of planet multiplicity (number of planets) and the distribution of orbital inclinations based on the sample of planet candidates discovered by the…