Publications (31)
Direct imaging of exoplanets in the habitable zone with adaptive optics
Jared R. Males, Laird M. Close, Olivier Guyon +16
One of the primary goals of exoplanet science is to find and characterize habitable planets, and direct imaging will play a key role in this effort. Though imaging a true Earth ana…
Gravitational Instabilities in Gaseous Protoplanetary Disks and Implications for Giant Planet Formation
Richard Durisen, Alan Boss, Lucio Mayer +3
Protoplanetary gas disks are likely to experience gravitational instabilites (GI's) during some phase of their evolution. Density perturbations in an unstable disk grow on a dynami…
The Occurrence of Rocky Habitable Zone Planets Around Solar-Like Stars from Kepler Data
Steve Bryson, Michelle Kunimoto, Ravi K. Kopparapu +79
We present occurrence rates for rocky planets in the habitable zones (HZ) of main-sequence dwarf stars based on the Kepler DR25 planet candidate catalog and Gaia-based stellar prop…
Kepler Mission Design, Realized Photometric Performance, and Early Science
David G. Koch, William J. Borucki, Gibor Basri +44
The Kepler Mission, launched on Mar 6, 2009 was designed with the explicit capability to detect Earth-size planets in the habitable zone of solar-like stars using the transit photo…
The Gemini NICI Planet-Finding Campaign: The Frequency of Planets around Young Moving Group Stars
Beth A. Biller, Michael C. Liu, Zahed Wahhaj +18
We report results of a direct imaging survey for giant planets around 80 members of the Beta Pic, TW Hya, Tucana-Horologium, AB Dor, and Hercules-Lyra moving groups, observed as pa…
The Gemini NICI Planet-Finding Campaign: Discovery of a Close Substellar Companion to the Young Debris Disk Star PZ Tel
Beth A. Biller, Michael C. Liu, Zahed Wahhaj +24
We report the discovery of a tight substellar companion to the young solar analog PZ Tel, a member of the Beta Pictoris moving group observed with high contrast adaptive optics ima…
New Frontiers for Terrestrial-sized to Neptune-sized Exoplanets In the Era of Extremely Large Telescopes
Ji Wang, Michael R. Meyer, Alan Boss +20
Surveys reveal that terrestrial- to Neptune-sized planets (1 4 R) are the most common type of planets in our galaxy. Detecting and characterizing such small…
Kepler-22b: A 2.4 Earth-radius Planet in the Habitable Zone of a Sun-like Star
William J. Borucki, David G. Koch, Natalie Batalha +80
A search of the time-series photometry from NASA's Kepler spacecraft reveals a transiting planet candidate orbiting the 11th magnitude G5 dwarf KIC 10593626 with a period of 290 da…
The Gemini NICI Planet-Finding Campaign
Michael C. Liu, Zahed Wahhaj, Beth A. Biller +21
Our team is carrying out a multi-year observing program to directly image and characterize young extrasolar planets using the Near-Infrared Coronagraphic Imager (NICI) on the Gemin…
New Parallaxes for the Upper Scorpius OB Association
Jessica Donaldson, Alycia Weinberger, Jonathan Gagné +2
Upper Scorpius is a subgroup of the nearest OB association, Scorpius--Centaurus. Its young age makes it an important association to study star and planet formation. We present para…
The Gemini NICI Planet-Finding Campaign : Discovery of a Substellar L Dwarf Companion to the Nearby Young M Dwarf CD-35 2722
Zahed Wahhaj, Michael C. Liu, Beth A. Biller +23
We present the discovery of a wide (67 AU) substellar companion to the nearby (21 pc) young solar-metallicity M1 dwarf CD-35 2722, a member of the ~100 Myr AB Doradus association.…
Astro2020 Science White Paper: Dynamical Processes in the Planet-Forming Environment
Peregrine McGehee, Alan Boss, Laird Close +3
The transfer of circumstellar disk mass and momentum onto the protostar and out into the environment occurs via a variety of mechanisms including magnetospheric accretion, jets, ou…
Characteristics of planetary candidates observed by Kepler, II: Analysis of the first four months of data
William J. Borucki, David G. Koch, Gibor Basri +63
On 1 February 2011 the Kepler Mission released data for 156,453 stars observed from the beginning of the science observations on 2 May through 16 September 2009. There are 1235 pla…
Searching for Giant Exoplanets around M-dwarf Stars (GEMS) I: Survey Motivation
Shubham Kanodia, Caleb I. Cañas, Suvrath Mahadevan +13
Recent discoveries of transiting giant exoplanets around M-dwarf stars (GEMS), aided by the all-sky coverage of TESS, are starting to stretch theories of planet formation through t…
The Gemini NICI Planet-Finding Campaign: The Frequency of Giant Planets Around Debris Disk Stars
Zahed Wahhaj, Michael C. Liu, Eric L. Nielsen +17
We have completed a high-contrast direct imaging survey for giant planets around 57 debris disk stars as part of the Gemini NICI Planet-Finding Campaign. We achieved median H-band…
Catching Element Formation In The Act
Chris L. Fryer, Frank Timmes, Aimee L. Hungerford +216
Gamma-ray astronomy explores the most energetic photons in nature to address some of the most pressing puzzles in contemporary astrophysics. It encompasses a wide range of objects…
The Gemini NICI Planet-Finding Campaign: Discovery of a Multiple System Orbiting the Young A Star HD 1160
Eric L. Nielsen, Michael C. Liu, Zahed Wahhaj +22
We report the discovery by the Gemini NICI Planet-Finding Campaign of two low-mass companions to the young A0V star HD 1160 at projected separations of 81 +/- 5 AU (HD 1160 B) and…
Exploring Other Worlds: Science Questions for Future Direct Imaging Missions (EXOPAG SAG15 Report)
Daniel Apai, Nicolas Cowan, Ravikumar Kopparapu +30
The NASA Exoplanet Exploration Program's SAG15 group has solicited, collected, and organized community input on high-level science questions that could be addressed with future dir…
Planet Occurrence within 0.25 AU of Solar-type Stars from Kepler
Andrew W. Howard, Geoffrey W. Marcy, Stephen T. Bryson +59
We report the distribution of planets as a function of planet radius (R_p), orbital period (P), and stellar effective temperature (Teff) for P < 50 day orbits around GK stars. Thes…
Seeing another Earth: Detecting and Characterizing Rocky Planets with Extremely Large Telescopes
Philip M. Hinz, Scott Kenyon, Michael R. Meyer +2
The detection of lower mass planets now being reported via radial velocity and microlensing surveys suggests that they may be ubiquitous. If missions such as Kepler are able to con…
The Demographics and Atmospheres of Giant Planets with the ELTs
Brendan Bowler, Steph Sallum, Alan Boss +23
Gas giants are the most readily detectable exoplanets but fundamental questions about their system architectures, formation, migration, and atmospheres have been unanswerable with…
Protoplanetary Disk Science Enabled by Extremely Large Telescopes
Hannah Jang-Condell, Sean Brittain, Alycia Weinberger +36
The processes that transform gas and dust in circumstellar disks into diverse exoplanets remain poorly understood. One key pathway is to study exoplanets as they form in their youn…
Molecular Line Emission from Gravitationally Unstable Protoplanetary Disks
Desika Narayanan, Craig Kulesa, Alan Boss +1
In the era of high resolution submillimeter interferometers, it will soon be possible to observe the neutral circumstellar medium directly involved in gas giant planet (GGP) format…
Masses and Distances of Planetary Microlens Systems with High Angular Resolution Imaging
Aparna Bhattacharya, Rachel Akeson, Jay Anderson +33
Microlensing is the only method that can detect and measure mass of wide orbit, low mass, solar system analog exoplanets. Mass measurements of such planets would yield massive scie…
Kepler-16: A Transiting Circumbinary Planet
Laurance R. Doyle, Joshua A. Carter, Daniel C. Fabrycky +46
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 Gemini NICI Planet-Finding Campaign: The Frequency of Giant Planets around Young B and A Stars
Eric L. Nielsen, Michael C. Liu, Zahed Wahhaj +22
We have carried out high contrast imaging of 70 young, nearby B and A stars to search for brown dwarf and planetary companions as part of the Gemini NICI Planet-Finding Campaign. O…
TOI-5205 b: A Short-period Jovian Planet Transiting a Mid-M Dwarf
Shubham Kanodia, Suvrath Mahadevan, Jessica Libby-Roberts +27
We present the discovery of TOI-5205~b, a transiting Jovian planet orbiting a solar metallicity M4V star, which was discovered using Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite photometr…
Wide-Orbit Exoplanet Demographics
David P. Bennett, Rachel Akeson, Yann Alibert +41
The Kepler, K2 and TESS transit surveys are revolutionizing our understanding of planets orbiting close to their host stars and our understanding of exoplanet systems in general, b…
Masses, Radii, and Orbits of Small Kepler Planets: The Transition from Gaseous to Rocky Planets
Geoffrey W. Marcy, Howard Isaacson, Andrew W. Howard +100
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…
Gravitational instability in binary protoplanetary disks
Lucio Mayer, Alan Boss, Andrew F. Nelson
We review the models and results of simulations of self-gravitating, gaseous protoplanetary disks in binary star systems. These models have been calculated by three different group…
Exoplanet Exploration Program Analysis Group (ExoPAG) Report to Paul Hertz Regarding Large Mission Concepts to Study for the 2020 Decadal Survey
B. Scott Gaudi, Eric Agol, Daniel Apai +36
This is a joint summary of the reports from the three Astrophysics Program Analysis Groups (PAGs) in response to the "Planning for the 2020 Decadal Survey" charge given by the Astr…