Related papers: Obliquity Constraints for the Extremely Eccentric …
Giant exoplanets have been directly imaged over orders of magnitude of orbital separations, prompting theoretical and observational investigations of their formation pathways. In this paper, we present new VLTI/GRAVITY astrometric data of…
Contrary to the orthodox picture of planet formation resulting in a neatly ordered Solar System, exoplanet systems exhibit highly diverse orbits: short and long periods, circular and eccentric, well- and misaligned, and even retrograde…
The angle $\psi$ between a planet's orbital axis and the spin axis of its parent star is an important diagnostic of planet formation, migration, and tidal evolution. We seek empirical constraints on $\psi$ by measuring the stellar…
The Kepler Mission has detected dozens of compact planetary systems with more than four transiting planets. This sample provides a collection of close-packed planetary systems with relatively little spread in the inclination angles of the…
Kepler-22b is the first transiting planet to have been detected in the habitable-zone of its host star. At 2.4 Earth radii, Kepler-22b is too large to be considered an Earth-analog, but should the planet host a moon large enough to maintain…
The population of short-period exo-Neptunes is thought to be shaped by an interplay between different dynamical mechanisms, such as orbital migration and tidal effects, and photoevaporation. We can gain insight into these processes by…
Doppler measurements of two G-type main-sequence stars, HD210277 and HD168443, reveal Keplerian variations that imply the presence of companions with masses (M sin i) of 1.28 and 5.04 M_Jup and orbital periods of 437 d and 58 d,…
Observations of exoplanets over the last two decades have revealed a new class of Jupiter-size planets with orbital periods of a few days, the so-called "hot Jupiters". Recent measurements using the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect have shown…
The measurement of an exoplanet's oblateness and obliquity provides insights into the planet's internal structure and formation history. Previous work using small differences in the shape of the transit light curve has been moderately…
Despite the severe bias of the transit method of exoplanet discovery toward short orbital periods, a modest sample of transiting exoplanets with orbital periods greater than 100 days is known. Long-term radial velocity (RV) surveys are…
The exoplanets known as hot Jupiters---Jupiter-sized planets with periods less than 10 days---likely are relics of dynamical processes that shape all planetary system architectures. Socrates et al. (2012) argued that high eccentricity…
We use Kepler short cadence light curves to constrain the oblateness of planet candidates in the Kepler sample. The transits of rapidly rotating planets that are deformed in shape will lead to distortions in the ingress and egress of their…
Fewer than 20 transiting Kepler planets have periods longer than one year. Our early search of the Kepler light curves revealed one such system, Kepler-1654 b (originally KIC~8410697b), which shows exactly two transit events and whose…
We show that the gas giant exoplanet HD 189733b is less oblate than Saturn, based on Spitzer Space Telescope photometry of seven transits. The observable manifestations of oblatenesswould have been slight anomalies during the ingress and…
The Kepler mission has revealed that Earth-sized planets are common, and dozens have been discovered to orbit in or near their host star's habitable zone. A major focus in astronomy is to determine which of these exoplanets are likely to…
Although several thousands of exoplanets have now been detected and characterized, observational biases have led to a paucity of long-period, low-mass exoplanets with measured masses and a corresponding lag in our understanding of such…
We constrain the angular momentum architecture of VHS J125601.92-125723.9, a 140 $\pm$ 20 Myr old hierarchical triple system composed of a low-mass binary and a widely-separated planetary-mass companion VHS 1256 b. VHS 1256 b has been a…
Kepler-1647b is the most recently discovered planet that transits two stars, i.e., a circumbinary planet (CBP). Due to its large orbital separation, Kepler-1647b stands out from the rest of the Kepler CBPs, which mostly reside on much…
Solar system planets move on almost circular orbits. In strong contrast, many massive gas giant exoplanets travel on highly elliptical orbits, whereas the shape of the orbits of smaller, more terrestrial, exoplanets remained largely…
This paper reports the discovery and characterization of the transiting hot giant exoplanet Kepler-17b. The planet has an orbital period of 1.486 days, and radial velocity measurements from the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) show a Doppler…