Related papers: Crowdfunding Astronomy Research with Google Sky
M dwarfs constitute more than 70% of the stars in the solar neighborhood. They are cooler and smaller than Sun-like stars and have less-massive disks which suggests that planets around these stars are more likely to be Neptune-size or…
The NASA Kepler and follow-on K2 missions (2009-2018) left a legacy of data and discoveries, finding thousands of exoplanets, and also obtaining high-precision long time-series data for hundreds of thousands of stars, including many types…
The overarching goal of planetary astronomy is to deduce how the present collection of objects found in our Solar System were formed from the original material present in the proto-solar nebula. As over two hundred exo-planetary systems are…
Our knowledge of magnetic activity of stars is mostly based on the study of the Sun and some spectroscopic surveys of a few hundreds of stars. However, the detailed mechanisms of the solar magnetic activity cycle are not fully understood.…
Cloud computing is a powerful new technology that is widely used in the business world. Recently, we have been investigating the benefits it offers to scientific computing. We have used three workflow applications to compare the performance…
The Kepler mission has been a success in both exoplanet search and stellar physics studies. Red giants have actually been quite a highlight in the Kepler scene. The Kepler long and almost continuous four-year observations allowed us to…
ESA and NASA are studying projects having a tremendous return on variable star research. Other national space agencies are also studying or developing projects of smaller costs but with impressive returns. The projects range from global…
Today, asteroseismology is entering in its golden age thanks to the observations provided by the CoRoT and Kepler space missions. In particular, we will make significant progresses in the understanding of the structure and evolution of…
The Kepler spacecraft provided the first long-baseline, high-precision photometry for large numbers of stars. This enabled the discovery of thousands of new exoplanets, and the characterization of myriad astrophysical phenomena. However,…
With round-the-clock monitoring of galactic bulge microlensing events, the PLANET experiment constrains the abundance and can yield the discovery of planets down to the mass of earth around galactic disk and bulge stars. Data taken until…
The Kepler mission's primary goal is the detection and characterization of Earth-like planets by observing continuously a region of sky for a nominal period of three-and-a-half years. Over 100,000 stars will be monitored, with a small…
The Cosmic-Ray Extremely Distributed Observatory (CREDO) uses the hunt for particle cascades from deep space as a vehicle for a unique "bottom-up" approach to scientific research. By engaging the non-specialist public of all ages as…
In addition to its great potential for characterizing extra-solar planetary systems the Kepler mission is providing unique data on stellar oscillations. A key aspect of Kepler asteroseismology is the application to solar-like oscillations…
The discovery of extra-solar planets is one of the greatest achievements of modern astronomy. The detection of planets with a wide range of masses demonstrates that extra-solar planets of low mass exist. In this paper we describe a mission,…
The Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT) survey is a ground-based program designed to search for transiting exoplanets orbiting relatively bright stars. To achieve this, the KELT Science Team operates two planets facilities -…
Ranked near the top of the long list of exciting discoveries made with NASA's Kepler photometer is the detection of transiting circumbinary planets. In just over a year the number of such planets went from zero to seven, including a…
The Kepler space telescope observed over 15,000 stars for asteroseismic studies. Of these, 75% of dwarfs (and 8% of giants) were found to show anomalous behavior: such as suppressed oscillations (low amplitude) or no oscillations at all.…
We propose to use a modest fraction of the re-purposed Kepler mission time and apertures to greatly increase the quantity and quality of our knowledge of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) rotation and shape. NEAs are important for understanding…
The Kepler space telescope monitors over 156.000 stars with an unprecedented photometric precision. We are interested in stellar rotational periods which we find using Lomb-Scargle periodograms. This work focuses on the 306 exoplanet…
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…