Publications (46)
Empirical Limits on Radial Velocity Planet Detection for Young Stars
Lynne Hillenbrand, Howard Isaacson, Geoffrey Marcy +3
We report initial results from our long term search using precision radial velocities for planetary-mass companions located within a few AU of stars younger than the Sun. Based on…
On the Transit Potential of the Planet Orbiting iota Draconis
Stephen R. Kane, Sabine Reffert, Gregory W. Henry +4
Most of the known transiting exoplanets are in short-period orbits, largely due to the bias inherent in detecting planets through the transit technique. However, the eccentricity d…
EarthFinder Probe Mission Concept Study: Characterizing nearby stellar exoplanet systems with Earth-mass analogs for future direct imaging
Peter Plavchan, Gautam Vasisht, Chas Beichman +52
EarthFinder is a NASA Astrophysics Probe mission concept selected for study as input to the 2020 Astrophysics National Academies Decadal Survey. The EarthFinder concept is based on…
The Transit Light Curve Project. X. A Christmas Transit of HD 17156b
Joshua N. Winn, Matthew J. Holman, Gregory W. Henry +6
Photometry is presented of the Dec. 25, 2007 transit of HD 17156b, which has the longest orbital period and highest orbital eccentricity of all the known transiting exoplanets. New…
Stellar Parameters for HD 69830, a Nearby Star with Three Neptune Mass Planets and an Asteroid Belt
Angelle Tanner, Tabetha S. Boyajian, Kaspar von Braun +9
We used the CHARA Array to directly measure the angular diameter of HD 69830, home to three Neptune mass planets and an asteroid belt. Our measurement of 0.674+/-0.014 milli-arcsec…
New Planets around Three G Dwarfs
Simon J. O'Toole, R. Paul Butler, C. G. Tinney +8
Doppler velocity measurements from the Anglo-Australian Planet Search reveal planetary mass companions to HD23127, HD159868, and a possible second planetary companion to HD154857.…
Building massive compact planetesimal disks from the accretion of pebbles
John Moriarty, Debra Fischer
We present a model in which planetesimal disks are built from the combination of planetesimal formation and accretion of radially drifting pebbles onto existing planetesimals. In t…
A Transiting Hot Jupiter Orbiting a Metal-Rich Star
Edward W. Dunham, William J. Borucki, David G. Koch +22
We announce the discovery of Kepler-6b, a transiting hot Jupiter orbiting a star with unusually high metallicity, [Fe/H] = +0.34 +/- 0.04. The planet's mass is about 2/3 that of Ju…
Two New Candidate Planets in Eccentric Orbits
Geoffrey W. Marcy, R. Paul Butler, Steven S. Vogt +2
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…
Identifying Very Metal-Rich Stars with Low-Resolution Spectra: Finding Planet-Search Targets
Sarah E. Robinson, Jay Strader, S. Mark Ammons +2
We present empirical calibrations that estimate stellar metallicity, effective temperature and surface gravity as a function of Lick/IDS indices. These calibrations have been deriv…
State of the Field: Extreme Precision Radial Velocities
Debra Fischer, Guillem Anglada-Escude, Pamela Arriagada +53
The Second Workshop on Extreme Precision Radial Velocities defined circa 2015 the state of the art Doppler precision and identified the critical path challenges for reaching 10 cm/…
Design and Construction of VUES: the Vilnius University Echelle Spectrograph
Colby Jurgenson, Debra Fischer, Tyler McCracken +5
In February of 2014 the Yale Exoplanet Laboratory was commissioned to design, build, and deliver a high resolution (R = 60,000) spectrograph for the 1.65-meter telescope at the Mol…
Spin-Orbit Alignment for the Circumbinary Planet Host Kepler-16A
Joshua N. Winn, Simon Albrecht, John Asher Johnson +31
Kepler-16 is an eccentric low-mass eclipsing binary with a circumbinary transiting planet. Here we investigate the angular momentum of the primary star, based on Kepler photometry…
KEPLER's First Rocky Planet: Kepler-10b
Natalie M. Batalha, William J. Borucki, Stephen T. Bryson +49
NASA's Kepler Mission uses transit photometry to determine the frequency of earth-size planets in or near the habitable zone of Sun-like stars. The mission reached a milestone towa…
Silicon and Nickel Enrichment in Planet-Host Stars: Observations and Implications for the Core-Accretion Theory of Planet Formation
Sarah E. Robinson, Gregory Laughlin, Peter Bodenheimer +1
We present evidence that stars with planets exhibit statistically significant silicon and nickel enrichment over the general metal-rich population. We also present simulations whic…
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…
Green, red and IR frequency comb line generation from single IR pump in AlN microring resonator
Hojoong Jung, Rebecca Stoll, Xiang Guo +2
On-chip frequency comb generations enable compact broadband sources for spectroscopic sensing and precision spectroscopy. Recent microcomb studies focus on infrared spectral regime…
Rotational Studies of Late-Type Stars. VII. M34 (NGC 1039) and the Evolution of Angular Momentum and Activity in Young Solar-Type Stars
David R. Soderblom, Burton F. Jones, Debra Fischer
We analyze Keck Hires observations of rotation in F, G, and K dwarf members of the open cluster M34 (NGC 1039), which is 250 Myr old, and we compare them to the Pleiades, Hyades, a…
A Strategy for Identifying the Grid Stars for the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM)
Sabine Frink, Andreas Quirrenbach, Debra Fischer +2
We present a strategy to identify several thousand stars that are astrometrically stable at the micro-arcsecond level for use in the SIM (Space Interferometry Mission) astrometric…
Rotational velocities of low-mass stars in the Pleiades and Hyades
Donald M. Terndrup, John R. Stauffer, Marc H. Pinsonneault +5
We have obtained high-resolution spectra of 89 M dwarf members of the Pleiades and Hyades and have derived radial velocities, H-alpha equivalent widths, and spectroscopic rotationa…
Discovery of a stellar companion to the nearby solar-analogue HD 104304
Carolin Schnupp, Carolina Bergfors, Wolfgang Brandner +6
Sun-like stars are promising candidates to host exoplanets and are often included in exoplanet surveys by radial velocity (RV) and direct imaging. In this paper we report on the de…
Project Blue: Visible Light Imaging Search for Terrestrial-class Exoplanets in the Habitable Zones of Alpha Centauri A and B
Jon Morse, Eduardo Bendek, Nathalie Cabrol +9
Project Blue is designed to deliver a small coronagraphic space telescope mission to low-Earth orbit capable of detecting an Earth-like planet in the habitable zones of the Sun-lik…
Report on Community Cadence Observing to Maximize the Scientific Output of the Keck Planet Finder
Erik Petigura, Andrew Howard, Jacob Bean +11
The arrival of the Keck Planet Finder (KPF) in 2022 represents a major advance in the precision radial velocity (PRV) capabilities of the W. M. Keck Observatory. In preparation for…
Detectability of Terrestrial Planets in Multi-Planet Systems: Preliminary Report
Wesley A. Traub, Charles Beichman, Andrew F. Boden +21
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…
Influence of Stellar Multiplicity On Planet Formation. I. Evidence of Suppressed Planet Formation Due to Stellar Companions Within 20 AU and Validation of Four Planets From the Kepler Multiple Planet Candidates
Ji Wang, Ji-Wei Xie, Thomas Barclay +1
The planet occurrence rate for multiple stars is important in two aspects. First, almost half of stellar systems in the solar neighborhood are multiple systems. Second, the compari…
The Measured Impact of Chromatic Atmospheric Effects on Barycentric Corrections: Results from the EXtreme PREcision Spectrograph
Ryan Blackman, Joel Ong, Debra Fischer
One source of error in high-precision radial velocity measurements of exoplanet host stars is chromatic change in Earth's atmospheric transmission during observations. Mitigation o…
Radial Velocity Prospects Current and Future: A White Paper Report prepared by the Study Analysis Group 8 for the Exoplanet Program Analysis Group (ExoPAG)
Peter Plavchan, Dave Latham, Scott Gaudi +17
[Abridged] The Study Analysis Group 8 of the NASA Exoplanet Analysis Group was convened to assess the current capabilities and the future potential of the precise radial velocity (…
Planet Hunters: The First Two Planet Candidates Identified by the Public using the Kepler Public Archive Data
Debra Fischer, Megan Schwamb, Kevin Schawinski +28
Planet Hunters is a new citizen science project, designed to engage the public in an exoplanet search using NASA Kepler public release data. In the first month after launch, users…
Kepler-424 b: A "Lonely" Hot Jupiter That Found A Companion
Michael Endl, Douglas A. Caldwell, Thomas Barclay +13
Hot Jupiter systems provide unique observational constraints for migration models in multiple systems and binaries. We report on the discovery of the Kepler-424 (KOI-214) two-plane…
Kepler Eclipsing Binary Stars. VII. The Catalog of Eclipsing Binaries Found in the Entire Kepler Data-Set
Brian Kirk, Kyle Conroy, Andrej Prša +47
The primary Kepler Mission provided nearly continuous monitoring of ~200,000 objects with unprecedented photometric precision. We present the final catalog of eclipsing binary syst…
Chemistry in an Evolving Protoplanetary Disk: Effects on Terrestrial Planet Composition
John Moriarty, Nikku Madhusudhan, Debra Fischer
The composition of planets is largely determined by the chemical and dynamical evolution of the disk during planetesimal formation and growth. To predict the diversity of exoplanet…
A Dynamical Analysis of the 47 UMa Planetary System
Gregory Laughlin, John Chambers, Debra Fischer
The mass and period ratios of the two planets orbiting 47 UMa suggest a possible kinship to the Jupiter-Saturn pair in our solar system. We explore the current dynamical state of t…
Improving Transit Predictions of Known Exoplanets with TERMS
Stephen R. Kane, David Ciardi, Debra Fischer +7
Transiting planet discoveries have largely been restricted to the short-period or low-periastron distance regimes due to the bias inherent in the geometric transit probability. Thr…
The Problem of Hipparcos Distances to Open Clusters. II. Constraints from Nearby Field Stars
David R. Soderblom, Jeremy R. King, Robert B. Hanson +4
This paper examines the discrepancy between distances to nearby open clusters as determined by parallaxes from Hipparcos compared to traditional main sequence fitting. The biggest…
A Hermite-Gaussian Based Radial Velocity Estimation Method
Parker Holzer, Jessi Cisewski-Kehe, Debra Fischer +1
As the first successful technique used to detect exoplanets orbiting distant stars, the Radial Velocity Method aims to detect a periodic Doppler shift in a star's spectrum. We intr…
A Great Successor to the Hubble Space Telescope
B. Scott Gaudi, John C. Clarke, Shawn Domagal-Goldman +7
The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has been the most impactful science-driven mission ever flown by NASA. However, when HST reaches the end of its life, there will be a void due to t…
Precision Space Astrometry as a Tool to Find Earth-like Exoplanets
Michael Shao, Slava G. Turyshev, Eduardo Bendek +6
Because of the recent technological advances, the key technologies needed for precision space optical astrometry are now in hand. The Microarcsecond Astrometry Probe (MAP) mission…
EarthFinder: A Precise Radial Velocity Probe Mission Concept For the Detection of Earth-Mass Planets Orbiting Sun-like Stars
Peter Plavchan, Bryson Cale, Patrick Newman +40
EarthFinder is a Probe Mission concept selected for study by NASA for input to the 2020 astronomy decadal survey. This study is currently active and a final white paper report is d…
A Search for the Transit of HD 168443b: Improved Orbital Parameters and Photometry
Genady Pilyavsky, Suvrath Mahadevan, Stephen R. Kane +13
The discovery of transiting planets around bright stars holds the potential to greatly enhance our understanding of planetary atmospheres. In this work we present the search for tr…
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…
HD 202772A B: A Transiting Hot Jupiter Around A Bright, Mildly Evolved Star In A Visual Binary Discovered By Tess
Songhu Wang, Matias Jones, Avi Shporer +52
We report the first confirmation of a hot Jupiter discovered by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission: HD 202772A b. The transit signal was detected in the data…
Transit Timing Observations from Kepler: IV. Confirmation of 4 Multiple Planet Systems by Simple Physical Models
Daniel C. Fabrycky, Eric B. Ford, Jason H. Steffen +31
Eighty planetary systems of two or more planets are known to orbit stars other than the Sun. For most, the data can be sufficiently explained by non-interacting Keplerian orbits, s…
Two Upper Limits on the Rossiter-McLaughlin Effect, with Differing Implications: WASP-1 has a High Obliquity and WASP-2 is Indeterminate
Simon Albrecht, Joshua N. Winn, John Asher Johnson +9
We present precise radial-velocity measurements of WASP-1 and WASP-2 throughout transits of their giant planets. Our goal was to detect the Rossiter-McLaughlin (RM) effect, the ano…
Precise radial velocities of giant stars IX. HD 59686 Ab: a massive circumstellar planet orbiting a giant star in a ~13.6 au eccentric binary system
Mauricio Ortiz, Sabine Reffert, Trifon Trifonov +11
Context: For over 12 yr, we have carried out a precise radial velocity survey of a sample of 373 G and K giant stars using the Hamilton Ãchelle Spectrograph at Lick Observatory. T…
APF - The Lick Observatory Automated Planet Finder
Steven S. Vogt, Matthew Radovan, Robert Kibrick +45
The Automated Planet Finder (APF) is a facility purpose-built for the discovery and characterization of extrasolar planets through high-cadence Doppler velocimetry of the reflex ba…
The N2K Consortium. IV. New temperatures and metallicities for 100,000+ FGK dwarfs
S. Mark Ammons, Sarah E. Robinson, Jay Strader +3
We have created a framework to facilitate the construction of specialized target lists for radial velocity surveys that are biased toward stars that (1) possess planets and (2) are…