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An Ultra-short Period Rocky Super-Earth with a Secondary Eclipse and a Neptune-like Companion around K2-141
Kristiansen, Martti H.; Vanderburg, Andrew; Latham, David W. +44 more
Ultra-short period (USP) planets are a class of low-mass planets with periods shorter than one day. Their origin is still unknown, with photo-evaporation of mini-Neptunes and in situ formation being the most credited hypotheses. Formation scenarios differ radically in the predicted composition of USP planets, and it is therefore extremely importan…
Dynamical Constraints on the HR 8799 Planets with GPI
Duchêne, Gaspard; Esposito, Thomas M.; Oppenheimer, Rebecca +52 more
The HR 8799 system uniquely harbors four young super-Jupiters whose orbits can provide insights into the system’s dynamical history and constrain the masses of the planets themselves. Using the Gemini Planet Imager, we obtained down to one milliarcsecond precision on the astrometry of these planets. We assessed four-planet orbit models with differ…
A Catalog of Cool Dwarf Targets for the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite
Muirhead, Philip S.; Lépine, Sébastien; Mann, Andrew W. +5 more
We present a catalog of cool dwarf targets (V-J> 2.7, T eff ≲ 4000 K) and their stellar properties for the upcoming Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), for the purpose of determining which cool dwarfs should be observed using two minute observations. TESS has the opportunity to search tens of thousands of nearby, cool, late…
The Solar Neighborhood XLIV: RECONS Discoveries within 10 parsecs
Henry, Todd J.; Winters, Jennifer G.; Jao, Wei-Chun +7 more
We describe the 44 systems discovered to be within 10 pc of the Sun by the RECONS team, primarily via the long-term astrometry program at the CTIO/SMARTS 0.9 m that began in 1999. The systems—including 41 with red dwarf primaries, 2 white dwarfs, and 1 brown dwarf—have trigonometric parallaxes greater than 100 mas, with errors of 0.4-2.4 mas in al…
The Faint End of the z = 5 Quasar Luminosity Function from the CFHTLS
Fan, Xiaohui; Jiang, Linhua; McGreer, Ian D. +1 more
We present results from a spectroscopic survey of z ∼ 5 quasars in the CFHT Legacy Survey. Using both optical color selection and a likelihood method, we select 97 candidates over an area of 105 deg2 to a limit of i AB < 23.2, and 7 candidates in the range 23.2 < i AB < 23.7 over an area of 18.5 deg2<…
Zodiacal Exoplanets in Time (ZEIT). VI. A Three-planet System in the Hyades Cluster Including an Earth-sized Planet
Vanderburg, Andrew; Bieryla, Allyson; Latham, David W. +11 more
Planets in young clusters are powerful probes of the evolution of planetary systems. Here we report the discovery of three planets transiting EPIC 247589423, a late-K dwarf in the Hyades (≃800 Myr) cluster, and robust detection limits for additional planets in the system. The planets were identified from their K2 light curves as part of our survey…
Measuring the Recoverability of Close Binaries in Gaia DR2 with the Robo-AO Kepler Survey
Baranec, Christoph; Law, Nicholas M.; Riddle, Reed +6 more
We use the Robo-AO survey of Kepler planetary candidate host stars, the largest adaptive optics survey yet performed, to measure the recovery rate of close stellar binaries in Gaia DR2. We find that Gaia recovers binaries down to 1″ at magnitude contrasts as large as six; closer systems are not resolved, regardless of secondary brightness. Gaia DR…
The Near-infrared Transmission Spectra of TRAPPIST-1 Planets b, c, d, e, f, and g and Stellar Contamination in Multi-epoch Transit Spectra
Apai, Dániel; Zhou, Yifan; Rackham, Benjamin V. +1 more
The seven approximately Earth-sized transiting planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system provide a unique opportunity to explore habitable- and nonhabitable-zone small planets within the same system. Its habitable-zone exoplanets—due to their favorable transit depths—are also worlds for which atmospheric transmission spectroscopy is within reach with the H…
Revisiting the Phase Curves of WASP-43b: Confronting Re-analyzed Spitzer Data with Cloudy Atmospheres
Mendonça, João M.; Demory, Brice-Olivier; Heng, Kevin +1 more
Recently acquired Hubble and Spitzer phase curves of the short-period hot Jupiter WASP-43b make it an ideal target for confronting theory with data. On the observational front, we re-analyze the 3.6 and 4.5 µm Spitzer phase curves and demonstrate that our improved analysis better removes residual red noise due to intra-pixel sensitivity, whi…
Zodiacal Exoplanets in Time (ZEIT). VIII. A Two-planet System in Praesepe from K2 Campaign 16
Vanderburg, Andrew; Rizzuto, Aaron C.; Kraus, Adam L. +5 more
Young planets offer a direct view of the formation and evolution processes that produced the diverse population of mature exoplanet systems known today. The repurposed Kepler mission K2 is providing the first sample of young transiting planets by observing populations of stars in nearby, young clusters and stellar associations. We report the detec…