Related papers: Circumbinary Planets -- The Next Steps
Due to the exquisite photometric precision, transiting exoplanet discoveries from the Kepler mission are enabling several new techniques of confirmation and characterization. One of these newly accessible techniques analyzes the phase…
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…
We report on the properties of eclipsing binaries from the Kepler mission with a newly developed photometric modeling code, which uses the light curve, spectral energy distribution of each binary, and stellar evolution models to infer…
We report on the masses, sizes, and orbits of the planets orbiting 22 Kepler stars. There are 49 planet candidates around these stars, including 42 detected through transits and 7 revealed by precise Doppler measurements of the host stars.…
With the loss of two reaction wheels, the period of Kepler's ultra-high precision photometric performance is at an end. Yet Kepler retains unique capabilities impossible to replicate from the ground or with existing or future space…
We report the detection of a planet whose orbit surrounds a pair of low-mass stars. Data from the Kepler spacecraft reveal transits of the planet across both stars, in addition to the mutual eclipses of the stars, giving precise constraints…
When an extrasolar planet passes in front of its star (transits), its radius can be measured from the decrease in starlight and its orbital period from the time between transits. Multiple planets transiting the same star reveal more: period…
Over a dozen transiting circumbinary planets have been discovered around eclipsing binaries. Transit detections are biased towards aligned planet and binary orbits, and indeed all of the known planets have mutual inclinations less than…
Kepler's primary mission is a search for earth-size exoplanets in the habitable zone of late-type stars using the transit method. To effectively accomplish this mission, Kepler orbits the Sun and stares nearly continuously at one…
The NASA TESS mission has discovered many transiting planets orbiting bright nearby stars, and high-resolution imaging studies have revealed that a number of these exoplanet hosts reside in binary or multiple star systems. In such systems,…
Planets on eccentric orbits have a higher geometric probability of transiting their host star. By application of Bayes' theorem, we reverse this logic to show that the eccentricity distribution of transiting planets is positively biased.…
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…
Recently, the Kepler Space Telescope has detected several planets in orbit around a close binary star system. These so-called circumbinary planets will experience non-trivial spatial and temporal distributions of radiative flux on their…
Transiting planet discoveries have yielded a plethora of information towards understanding the structure and atmospheres of extra-solar planets. These discoveries have been restricted to the short-period or low-periastron distance regimes…
The Kepler Mission is monitoring the brightness of ~150,000 stars searching for evidence of planetary transits. As part of the "Hunt for Exomoons with Kepler" (HEK) project, we report a planetary system with two confirmed planets and one…
In March 2009, NASA will launch the Kepler satellite -- a mission designed to discover habitable Earth-like planets around distant Sun-like stars. The method that Kepler will use to detect distant worlds will only reveal the size of the…
Structure in the planet distribution provides an insight into the processes that shape the formation and evolution of planets. The Kepler mission has led to an abundance of statistical discoveries in regards to planetary radius, but the…
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…
This paper is devoted to exploring how we can discover and study nearby (< 1-2 kpc) planetary and binary systems by observing their action as gravitational lenses. Lensing can extend the realm of nearby binaries and planets that can be…
The Kepler space mission is devoted to finding Earth-size planets in habitable zones orbiting other stars. Its large, 105-deg field-of-view features over 156,000 stars that are observed continuously to detect and characterize planet…