Related papers: The Discovery of Kepler-16b

Gravitational waves have opened a new observational window through which some of the most exotic objects in the Universe, as well as some of the secrets of gravitation itself, can now be revealed. Among all these new discoveries, we…

Forty mercury isotopes have so far been observed; the discovery of these isotopes is discussed. For each isotope a brief summary of the first refereed publication, including the production and identification method, is presented.

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…

The prime Kepler mission detected 34,032 transit-like signals, out of which 8,054 were identified as likely due to astrophysical planet transits or eclipsing binaries. We manually examined 306 of the remaining 25,978 detections, and found…

The Kepler Space Telescope has discovered thousands of planets via the transit method. The transit timing variations of these planets allows us not only to infer the existence of other planets, transiting or not, but to characterize a…

Mutually misaligned circumbinary planets may form in a warped or broken gas disc or from later planet-planet interactions. With numerical simulations and analytic estimates we explore the dynamics of two circumbinary planets with a large…

Among more than 200 extrasolar planet candidates discovered to date, there is no known planet orbiting around normal binary stars. In this paper, we demonstrate that microlensing is a technique that can detect such planets. Microlensing…

Circumbinary Planets (CBPs) can be misaligned with their host binary stars. Orbital dynamics, simulations, and recent observations of proto-planetary disks all suggest that the planet can stably orbit in a plane perpendicular to that of an…

During the past 20 years, the idea that non-spherical planetary nebulae (PN) may need a binary or planetary interaction to be shaped was discussed by various authors. It is now generally agreed that the varied morphologies of PN cannot be…

The Kepler Mission is exploring the diversity of planets and planetary systems. Its legacy will be a catalog of discoveries sufficient for computing planet occurrence rates as a function of size, orbital period, star-type, and insolation…

The formation of single sdB stars is an unresolved issue and the presence of close sub-stellar companions could explain the stellar envelope ejection near the tip of the RGB, that is needed to form an sdB star. In the last 6 years the first…

The abundance and properties of planets orbiting binary stars - circumbinary planets - are largely unknown because they are difficult to detect with currently available techniques. Results from the Kepler satellite and other studies…

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…

Recently, a number of planets orbiting binary stars have been discovered by the Kepler space telescope. In a few systems the planets reside close to the dynamical stability limit. Due to the difficulty of forming planets in such close…

Binaries have played a crucial role many times in the history of modern astronomy and are doing so again in the rapidly evolving exploration of the Kuiper Belt. The large fraction of transneptunian objects that are binary or multiple, 48…

We continue to investigate the binary system Kepler-16, consisting of a K-type main-sequence star, a red dwarf, and a circumbinary Saturnian planet. As part of our study, we describe the system's habitable zone based on different climate…

We ask if Earth-like planets (terrestrial mass and habitable-zone orbit) can be detected in multi-planet systems, using astrometric and radial velocity observations. We report here the preliminary results of double-blind calculations…

Transiting super-Earths orbiting bright stars in short orbital periods are interesting targets for the study of planetary atmospheres. While selecting super-Earths suitable for further characterization from the ground among a list of…

The Kepler-9 system harbors three known transiting planets. The system holds significant interest for several reasons. First, the outer two planets exhibit a period ratio that is close to a 2:1 orbital commensurability, with attendant…

We present an efficient analytical method to predict the maximum transit timing variations of a circumbinary exoplanet, given some basic parameters of the host binary. We derive an analytical model giving limits on the potential location of…