Related papers: Probing TRAPPIST-1-like systems with K2
The prime Kepler mission revealed that small planets (<4 R_earth) are common, especially around low-mass M dwarfs. K2, the re-purposed Kepler mission, continues this exploration of small planets around small stars. Here we combine K2…
With the discovery of a planetary system around TRAPPIST-1, there has been a surge of interest in ultracool dwarfs as potential planet hosts. Planetary systems around ultracool dwarfs represent our best chance of characterising temperate…
The newly detected TRAPPIST-1 system, with seven low-mass, roughly Earth-sized planets transiting a nearby ultra-cool dwarf, is one of the most important exoplanet discoveries to date. The short baseline of the available discovery…
Earth-sized exoplanets that transit nearby, late spectral type red dwarfs will be prime targets for atmospheric characterization in the coming decade. Such systems, however, are difficult to find via wide-field transit surveys like Kepler…
Searching for Earth-sized planets in data from Kepler's extended mission (K2) is a niche that still remains to be fully exploited. The TFAW survey is an ongoing project that aims to re-analyze all light curves in K2 C1-C8 and C12-C18…
Discoveries from the prime Kepler mission demonstrated that small planets (< 3 Earth-radii) are common outcomes of planet formation. While Kepler detected many such planets, all but a handful orbit faint, distant stars and are not amenable…
The NASA K2 mission, salvaged from the hardware failures of the Kepler telescope, has continued Kepler's planet-hunting success. It has revealed nearly 500 transiting planets around the ecliptic plane, many of which are the subject of…
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…
We present an improved estimate of the occurrence rate of small planets orbiting small stars by searching the full four-year Kepler data set for transiting planets using our own planet detection pipeline and conducting transit injection and…
By targeting nearby M dwarfs, a transit search using modest equipment is capable of discovering planets as small as 2 Earth radii in the habitable zones of their host stars. The MEarth Project, a future transit search, aims to employ a…
The signatures of planets hosted by M dwarfs are more readily detected with transit photometry and radial velocity methods than those of planets around larger stars. Recently, transit photometry was used to discover seven planets orbiting…
Small, cool planets represent the typical end-products of planetary formation. Studying the archi- tectures of these systems, measuring planet masses and radii, and observing these planets' atmospheres during transit directly informs…
The TRAPPIST-1 system is comprised of seven Earth-sized rocky planets in small orbits around a Jupiter-sized ultracool dwarf star 12 parsec away. These planets cover an irradiation range similar to the range of the inner solar system. Three…
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…
The NASA K2 mission uses photometry to find planets transiting stars of various types. M dwarfs are of high interest since they host more short period planets than any other type of main sequence stars and transiting planets around M dwarfs…
The TRAPPIST-1 system is remarkable for its seven planets that are similar in size, mass, density, and stellar heating to the rocky planets Venus, Earth, and Mars in our own Solar System (Gillon et al. 2017). All TRAPPIST-1 planets have…
Nine transiting Earth-sized planets have recently been discovered around nearby late M dwarfs, including the TRAPPIST-1 planets and two planets discovered by the MEarth survey, GJ 1132b and LHS 1140b. These planets are the smallest known…
The MEarth Project is a ground-based photometric survey to find planets transiting the closest and smallest main-sequence stars. In its first four years, MEarth discovered one transiting exoplanet, the 2.7 Earth radius planet GJ1214b. Here,…
We propose to use Kepler in 2-wheel mode to conduct a detailed search for Earth-sized planets orbiting ultra-cool stars and brown dwarfs (spectral types from M7 to L3). This population of objects presents several advantages for exoplanet…
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…