Publications (132)
A collage of small planets from the Lick Carnegie Exoplanet Survey : Exploring the super-Earth and sub-Neptune mass regime
Jennifer A. Burt, Fabo Feng, Bradford Holden +12
Analysis of new precision radial velocity (RV) measurements from the Lick Automated Planet Finder (APF) and Keck HIRES have yielded the discovery of three new exoplanet candidates…
Parameters and Predictions for the Long-Period Transiting Planet HD 17156b
Jonathan Irwin, David Charbonneau, Philip Nutzman +8
We report high-cadence time-series photometry of the recently-discovered transiting exoplanet system HD 17156, spanning the time of transit on UT 2007 October 1, from three separat…
Refining Exoplanet Ephemerides and Transit Observing Strategies
Stephen R. Kane, Suvrath Mahadevan, Kaspar von Braun +2
Transiting planet discoveries have yielded a plethora of information regarding the internal structure and atmospheres of extra-solar planets. These discoveries have been restricted…
A Dying Universe: The Long Term Fate and Evolution of Astrophysical Objects
Fred C. Adams, Gregory Laughlin
This paper outlines astrophysical issues related to the long term fate of the universe. We consider the evolution of planets, stars, stellar populations, galaxies, and the universe…
New Constraints on Gliese 876 -- Exemplar of Mean-Motion Resonance
Sarah Millholland, Gregory Laughlin, Johanna Teske +7
Gliese 876 harbors one of the most dynamically rich and well-studied exoplanetary systems. The nearby M4V dwarf hosts four known planets, the outer three of which are trapped in a…
Saturn Forms by Core Accretion in 3.4 Myr
Sarah E. Dodson-Robinson, Peter Bodenheimer, Gregory Laughlin +3
We present two new in situ core accretion simulations of Saturn with planet formation timescales of 3.37 Myr (model S0) and 3.48 Myr (model S1), consistent with observed protostell…
Effects of Secular Interactions in Extrasolar Planetary Systems
Fred C. Adams, Gregory Laughlin
This paper studies the effects of dynamical interactions among the planets in observed extrasolar planetary systems, including hypothetical additional bodies, with a focus on secul…
Turbulence in Extrasolar Planetary Systems Implies that Mean Motion Resonances are Rare
Fred C. Adams, Gregory Laughlin, Anthony M. Bloch
This paper considers the effects of turbulence on mean motion resonances in extrasolar planetary systems and predicts that systems rarely survive in a resonant configuration. A gro…
Determination of the Interior Structure of Transiting Planets in Multiple-Planet Systems
Konstantin Batygin, Peter Bodenheimer, Gregory Laughlin
Tidal dissipation within a short-period transiting extrasolar planet perturbed by a companion object can drive orbital evolution of the system to a so-called tidal fixed point, in…
3.6 and 4.5 m Phase Curves of the Highly-Irradiated Hot Jupiters WASP-19b and HAT-P-7b
Ian Wong, Heather A. Knutson, Tiffany Kataria +15
We analyze full-orbit phase curve observations of the transiting hot Jupiters WASP-19b and HAT-P-7b at 3.6 and 4.5 m obtained using the Spitzer Space Telescope. For WASP-19b, w…
Lunar Exploration as a Probe of Ancient Venus
Samuel H. C. Cabot, Gregory Laughlin
An ancient Venusian rock could constrain that planet's history, and reveal the past existence of oceans. Such samples may persist on the Moon, which lacks an atmosphere and signifi…
A Physically-Motivated Photometric Calibration of M Dwarf Metallicity
Kevin C. Schlaufman, Gregory Laughlin
The location of M dwarfs in the V-K_s--M_Ks color-magnitude diagram (CMD) has been shown to correlate with metallicity. We demonstrate that previous empirical photometric calibrati…
Type I Planetary Migration with MHD Turbulence
Gregory Laughlin, Adriane Steinacker, Fred Adams
This paper examines how type I planet migration is affected by the presence of turbulent density fluctuations in the circumstellar disk. For type I migration, the planet does not c…
Singular Isothermal Disks: II. Nonaxisymmetric Bifurcations and Equilibria
Daniele Galli, Frank H. Shu, Gregory Laughlin +1
We review the difficulties of the classical fission and fragmentation hypotheses for the formation of binary and multiple stars. A crucial missing ingredient in previous theoretica…
Constraints on the Birth Aggregate of the Solar System
Fred C. Adams, Gregory Laughlin
Using the observed properties of our solar system, in particular the isotopic compositions of meteorites and the regularity of the planetary orbits, we constrain the star formation…
Systemic: A Testbed For Characterizing the Detection of Extrasolar Planets. I. The Systemic Console Package
Stefano Meschiari, Aaron Wolf, Eugenio Rivera +3
We present the systemic Console, a new all-in-one, general-purpose software package for the analysis and combined multiparameter fitting of Doppler radial velocity (RV) and transit…
A Super-Earth Orbiting the Nearby Sun-like Star HD 1461
Eugenio J. Rivera, R. Paul Butler, Steven S. Vogt +3
We present precision radial velocity data that reveal a Super-Earth mass planet and two probable additional planets orbiting the bright nearby G0V star HD 1461. Our 12.8 years of K…
Reassessing Exoplanet Light Curves with a Thermal Model
Arthur D. Adams, Gregory Laughlin
We present a uniform assessment of existing near-infrared Spitzer Space Telescope observations of planet-bearing stars. Using a simple four-parameter blackbody thermal model, we an…
Orbital Phase Variations of the Eccentric Giant Planet HAT-P-2b
Nikole K. Lewis, Heather A. Knutson, Adam P. Showman +20
We present the first secondary eclipse and phase curve observations for the highly eccentric hot Jupiter HAT-P-2b in the 3.6, 4.5, 5.8, and 8.0 μm bands of the Spitzer Space Teles…
TTV-determined Masses for Warm Jupiters and their Close Planetary Companions
Dong-Hong Wu, Songhu Wang, Ji-Lin Zhou +2
Although the formation and the properties of hot Jupiters (with orbital periods d) have attracted a great deal of attention, the origins of warm Jupiters (d) ar…
The HD 192263 system: planetary orbital period and stellar variability disentangled
Diana Dragomir, Stephen R. Kane, Gregory W. Henry +11
As part of the Transit Ephemeris Refinement and Monitoring Survey (TERMS), we present new radial velocities and photometry of the HD 192263 system. Our analysis of the already avai…
Warm Spitzer Photometry of XO-4b, HAT-P-6b and HAT-P-8b
Kamen O. Todorov, Drake Deming, Heather A. Knutson +11
We have analyzed Warm Spitzer/IRAC observations of the secondary eclipses of three planets, XO-4b, HAT-P-6b and HAT-P-8b. We measure secondary eclipse amplitudes at 3.6μm and 4.5΅
Revisiting the Full Sets of Orbital Parameters for the XO-3 System: No evidence for Temporal Variation of the Spin-Orbit Angle
Keduse Worku, Songhu Wang, Jennifer Burt +14
We present 12 new transit light curves and 16 new out-of-transit radial velocity measurements for the XO-3 system. By modelling our newly collected measurements together with archi…
Self-Consistent Spin, Tidal and Dynamical Equations of Motion in the REBOUNDx Framework
Tiger Lu, Hanno Rein, Daniel Tamayo +4
We have introduced self-consistent spin, tidal and dynamical equations of motion into REBOUNDx, a library of additional effects for the popular N-body integrator REBOUND. The equat…
Ten Low Mass Companions from the Keck Precision Velocity Survey
Steven S. Vogt, R. Paul Butler, Geoffrey W. Marcy +4
Ten new low mass companions have emerged from the Keck precision Doppler velocity survey, with minimum (msini) masses ranging from 0.8 mjup to 0.34 msun. Five of these are planet c…
Evidence Suggesting that 'Oumuamua is the ~30 Myr-old product of a Molecular Cloud
Cheng-Han Hsieh, Gregory Laughlin, Hector G. Arce
The appearance of interstellar objects (ISOs) in the Solar System -- and specifically the arrival of 1I/'Oumuamua -- points to a significant number density of free-floating bodies…
The Case for a Large-Scale Occultation Network
Malena Rice, Gregory Laughlin
We discuss the feasibility of and present initial designs and approximate cost estimates for a large () network of small photometric telescopes that is purpose-built to…
On the Detection of Non-Transiting Hot Jupiters in Multiple-Planet Systems
Sarah Millholland, Songhu Wang, Gregory Laughlin
We outline a photometric method for detecting the presence of a non-transiting short-period giant planet in a planetary system harboring one or more longer period transiting planet…
MACHOs, White Dwarfs, and the Age of the Universe
David S. Graff, Gregory Laughlin, Katherine Freese
(Abridged Abstract) A favored interpretation of recent microlensing measurements towards the Large Magellanic Cloud implies that a large fraction (i.e. 10--50%) of the mass of the…
Dissecting Latency in the Internet's Fiber Infrastructure
Ilker Nadi Bozkurt, Waqar Aqeel, Debopam Bhattacherjee +5
The recent publication of the `InterTubes' map of long-haul fiber-optic cables in the contiguous United States invites an exciting question: how much faster would the Internet be i…
Secondary Eclipse Photometry of the Exoplanet WASP-5b with Warm Spitzer
Nathaniel J. Baskin, Heather A. Knutson, Adam Burrows +10
We present photometry of the extrasolar planet WASP-5b in the 3.6 and 4.5 micron bands taken with the Spitzer Space Telescope's Infrared Array Camera as part of the extended warm m…
Two Jovian-Mass Planets in Earthlike Orbits
Sarah E. Robinson, Gregory Laughlin, Steven S. Vogt +7
We report the discovery of two new planets: a 1.94 M_Jup planet in a 1.8-year orbit of HD 5319, and a 2.51 M_Jup planet in a 1.1-year orbit of HD 75898. The measured eccentricities…
3.6 and 4.5 Micron Phase Curves and Evidence for Non-Equilibrium Chemistry in the Atmosphere of Extrasolar Planet HD 189733b
Heather A. Knutson, Nikole Lewis, Jonathan J. Fortney +11
We present new, full-orbit observations of the infrared phase variations of the canonical hot Jupiter HD 189733b obtained in the 3.6 and 4.5 micron bands using the Spitzer Space Te…
Host Star Properties and Transit Exclusion for the HD 38529 Planetary System
Gregory W. Henry, Stephen R. Kane, Sharon X. Wang +13
The transit signature of exoplanets provides an avenue through which characterization of exoplanetary properties may be undertaken, such as studies of mean density, structure, and…
A Larger Sample Confirms Small Planets Around Hot Stars Are Misaligned
Emma M. Louden, Songhu Wang, Joshua N. Winn +7
The distribution of stellar obliquities provides critical insight into the formation and evolution pathways of exoplanets. In the past decade, it was found that hot stars hosting h…
The Aligned Orbit of WASP-148b, the Only Known Hot Jupiter with a Nearby Warm Jupiter Companion, from NEID and HIRES
Xian-Yu Wang, Malena Rice, Songhu Wang +39
We present spectroscopic measurements of the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect for WASP-148b, the only known hot Jupiter with a nearby warm-Jupiter companion, from the WIYN/NEID and Keck/…
Origins of Hot Jupiters from the Stellar Obliquity Distribution
Malena Rice, Songhu Wang, Gregory Laughlin
The obliquity of a star, or the angle between its spin axis and the average orbit normal of its companion planets, provides a unique constraint on that system's evolutionary histor…
On the Dynamical Stability of the Solar System
Konstantin Batygin, Gregory Laughlin
A long-term numerical integration of the classical Newtonian approximation to the planetary orbital motions of the full Solar System (sun + 8 planets), spanning 20 Gyr, was perform…
Identifying Interstellar Object Impact Craters
Samuel H. C. Cabot, Gregory Laughlin
The discoveries of two Interstellar Objects (ISOs) in recent years has generated significant interest in constraining their physical properties and the mechanisms behind their form…
The Lick-Carnegie Survey: Four New Exoplanet Candidates
Stefano Meschiari, Gregory Laughlin, Steven S. Vogt +4
We present new precise HIRES radial velocity (RV) data sets of five nearby stars obtained at Keck Observatory. HD 31253, HD 218566, HD 177830, HD 99492 and HD 74156 are host stars…
Astronomical engineering: a strategy for modifying planetary orbits
D. G. Korycansky, Gregory Laughlin, Fred C. Adams
The Sun's gradual brightening will seriously compromise the Earth's biosphere within ~ 1E9 years. If Earth's orbit migrates outward, however, the biosphere could remain intact over…
The Lick-Carnegie Exoplanet Survey: A Uranus-mass Fourth Planet for GJ 876 in an Extrasolar Laplace Configuration
Eugenio J. Rivera, Gregory Laughlin, R. Paul Butler +3
(Abreviated) Continued radial velocity monitoring of the nearby M4V red dwarf star GJ~876 with Keck/HIRES has revealed the presence of a Uranus-mass fourth planetary companion in t…
The 4.5 m full-orbit phase curve of the hot Jupiter HD 209458b
Robert T. Zellem, Nikole K. Lewis, Heather A. Knutson +10
The hot Jupiter HD 209458b is particularly amenable to detailed study as it is among the brightest transiting exoplanet systems currently known (V-mag = 7.65; K-mag = 6.308) and ha…
Five Intermediate-Period Planets from the N2K Sample
Debra A. Fischer, Steven S. Vogt, Geoffrey W. Marcy +12
We report the detection of five Jovian mass planets orbiting high metallicity stars. Four of these stars were first observed as part of the N2K program and exhibited low RMS veloci…
Constraints on the Intergalactic Transport of Cosmic Rays
Fred C. Adams, Katherine Freese, Gregory Laughlin +2
Motivated by recent experimental proposals to search for extragalactic cosmic rays (including anti-matter from distant galaxies), we study particle propagation through the intergal…
The Lick-Carnegie Exoplanet Survey: Gliese 687b: A Neptune-Mass Planet Orbiting a Nearby Red Dwarf
Jennifer Burt, Steven S. Vogt, R. Paul Butler +5
Precision radial velocities from the Automated Planet Finder and Keck/HIRES reveal an M*sin(i) =18 +/- 2 Earth mass planet orbiting the nearby M3V star GJ 687. This planet has an o…
A New Atmospheric Model for HD 189733 b
Jonathan Langton, Gregory Laughlin
We have developed a new two-dimensional hydrostatically-balanced isobaric hydrodynamic model for use in simulation of exoplanetary atmospheres. We apply this model to the infrared…
Stellar Obliquities in Long-period Exoplanet Systems (SOLES) I: The Spin-Orbit Alignment of K2-140 b
Malena Rice, Songhu Wang, Andrew W. Howard +8
Obliquity measurements for stars hosting relatively long-period giant planets with weak star-planet tidal interactions may play a key role in distinguishing between formation theor…
A Quasi-Stationary Solution to Gliese 436b's Eccentricity
Konstantin Batygin, Gregory Laughlin, Stefano Meschiari +3
We investigate the possibility that the large orbital eccentricity of the transiting Neptune-mass planet Gliese 436b is maintained in the face of tidal dissipation by a second plan…
Extrasolar Trojans: The Viability and Detectability of Planets in the 1:1 Resonance
Gregory Laughlin, John Chambers
We explore the possibility that extrasolar planets might be found in the 1:1 mean-motion resonance. There are a variety of stable co-orbtial configurations, and we specifically exa…
Supervised Learning Detection of Sixty Non-Transiting Hot Jupiter Candidates
Sarah Millholland, Gregory Laughlin
The optical, full-phase photometric variations of a short-period planet provide a unique view of the planet's atmospheric composition and dynamics. The number of planets with optic…
Hidden Planets: Implications from 'Oumuamua and DSHARP
Malena Rice, Gregory Laughlin
The discovery of 'Oumuamua (1I/2017 U1), the first interstellar interloper, suggests an abundance of free-floating small bodies whose ejection into galactic space cannot be explain…
Kepler Exoplanet Candidate Host Stars are Preferentially Metal Rich
Kevin C. Schlaufman, Gregory Laughlin
We find that Kepler exoplanet candidate (EC) host stars are preferentially metal-rich, including the low-mass stellar hosts of small-radius ECs. The last observation confirms a ten…
A Neptune-mass Planet Orbiting the Nearby G Dwarf HD16417
Simon O'Toole, C. G. Tinney, R. Paul Butler +6
Precision Doppler measurements from an intensive 48 night "Rocky Planet Search" observing campaign on the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) have revealed the presence of a low-mass…
On the Consequences of the Detection of an Interstellar Asteroid
Gregory Laughlin, Konstantin Batygin
The arrival of the robustly hyperbolic asteroid A/2017 U1 has potentially interesting ramifications for the planet-formation process. Although extrapolations from a sample size of…
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…
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…
Observational Consequences of Hydrodynamic Flows on Hot Jupiters
Jonathan Langton, Gregory Laughlin
We use a grid-based shallow water model to simulate the atmospheric dynamics of the transiting hot Jupiter HD 209458b. Under the usual assumption that the planet is in synchronous…
Transiting Exoplanet Monitoring Project (TEMP). IV. Refined System Parameters, Transit Timing Variations and Orbital Stability of the Transiting Planetary System HAT-P-25
Xian-Yu Wang, Songhu Wang, Tobias C. Hinse +12
We present eight new light curves of the transiting extra-solar planet HAT-P-25b obtained from 2013 to 2016 with three telescopes at two observatories. We use the new light curves,…
Improved Orbital Parameters and Transit Monitoring for HD 156846b
Stephen R. Kane, Andrew W. Howard, Genady Pilyavsky +10
HD 156846b is a Jovian planet in a highly eccentric orbit (e = 0.85) with a period of 359.55 days. The pericenter passage at a distance of 0.16 AU is nearly aligned to our line of…
Warm Spitzer Photometry of Three Hot Jupiters: HAT-P-3b, HAT-P-4b and HAT-P-12b
Kamen O. Todorov, Drake Deming, Heather A. Knutson +11
We present Warm Spitzer/IRAC secondary eclipse time series photometry of three short-period transiting exoplanets, HAT-P-3b, HAT-P-4b and HAT-P-12b, in both the available 3.6 and 4…
Kepler Multi-Planet Systems Exhibit Unexpected Intra-system Uniformity in Mass and Radius
Sarah Millholland, Songhu Wang, Gregory Laughlin
The widespread prevalence of close-in, nearly coplanar super-Earth- and sub-Neptune-sized planets in multiple-planet systems was one of the most surprising results from the Kepler…
Spitzer Transit and Secondary Eclipse Photometry of GJ 436b
Drake Deming, Joseph Harrington, Gregory Laughlin +4
We report the results of infrared (8 micron) transit and secondary eclipse photometry of the hot Neptune exoplanet, GJ436b using Spitzer. The nearly photon-limited precision of the…
Mining the Metal-Rich Stars for Planets
Gregory Laughlin
We examine the correlation between stellar metallicity and short period planets. It appears that approximately 1% of dwarf stars in the solar neighborhood harbor short-period plane…
Formation and Detectability of Terrestrial Planets Around Alpha Centauri B
Javiera M. Guedes, Eugenio J. Rivera, Erica Davis +3
We simulate the formation of planetary systems around Alpha Centauri B. The N-body accretionary evolution of a 1/r disk populated with 400-900 lunar-mass protoplanets is followed f…
Constraints on Planet Nine's Orbit and Sky Position within a Framework of Mean Motion Resonances
Sarah Millholland, Gregory Laughlin
A number of authors have proposed that the statistically significant orbital alignment of the most distant Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) is evidence of an as-yet undetected planet in…
A 4-Planet System Orbiting the K0V Star HD 141399
Steven S. Vogt, R. Paul Butler, Eugenio J. Rivera +6
We present precision radial velocity (RV) data sets from Keck-HIRES and from Lick Observatory's new Automated Planet Finder Telescope and Levy Spectrometer on Mt. Hamilton that rev…
Photoevaporation of Circumstellar Disks due to External FUV Radiation in Stellar Aggregates
Fred C. Adams, David Hollenbach, Gregory Laughlin +1
When stars form in small groups (N = 100 - 500 members), their circumstellar disks are exposed to little EUV radiation but a great deal of FUV radiation from massive stars in the g…
Tidal Dissipation Regimes Among the Short-Period Exoplanets
Emma Louden, Gregory Laughlin, Sarah Millholland
The efficiency of tidal dissipation provides a zeroth-order link to a planet's physical properties. For super-Earth and sub-Neptune planets in the range $R_{\oplus}\lesssim R_p \le…
On the Anomalous Radii of the Transiting Extrasolar Planets
Gregory Laughlin, Matteo Crismani, Fred C. Adams
We present a systematic evaluation of the agreement between the observed radii of 90 well-characterized transiting extrasolar giant planets and their corresponding model radii. Our…
Constraints on the Occurrence of 'Oumuamua-Like Objects
W. Garrett Levine, Samuel H. C. Cabot, Darryl Seligman +1
At present, there exists no consensus in the astronomical community regarding either the bulk composition or the formation mechanism for the interstellar object 1I/2017 U1 ('Oumuam…
First Results from the Transit Ephemeris Refinement and Monitoring Survey (TERMS)
Stephen R. Kane, Suvrath Mahadevan, Kaspar von Braun +3
Transiting planet discoveries have yielded a plethora of information towards understanding the structure and atmospheres of extra-solar planets. These discoveries have been restric…
Detection of Intermediate-Period Transiting Planets with a Network of Small Telescopes: transitsearch.org
Scott Seagroves, Justin Harker, Gregory Laughlin +2
We describe a project (transitsearch.org) currently attempting to discover transiting intermediate-period planets orbiting bright parent stars, and we simulate that project's perfo…
The Feasibility and Benefits of In Situ Exploration of `Oumuamua-like objects
Darryl Seligman, Gregory Laughlin
A rapid accumulation of observations and interpretation have followed in the wake of 1I `Oumuamua's passage through the inner Solar System. We briefly outline the consequences that…
Systemic: A Testbed for Characterizing the Detection of Extrasolar Planets. II. Numerical approaches to the Transit Timing Inverse Problem
Stefano Meschiari, Gregory Laughlin
Transit timing variations - deviations from strict periodicity between successive passages of a transiting planet - can be used to probe the structure and dynamics of multiple-plan…
An orbital window into the ancient Sun's mass
Christopher Spalding, Woodward W. Fischer, Gregory Laughlin
Models of the Sun's long-term evolution suggest that its luminosity was substantially reduced 2-4 billion years ago, which is inconsistent with substantial evidence for warm and we…
Exoplanetary Geophysics -- An Emerging Discipline
Gregory Laughlin, Jack J. Lissauer
Thousands of extrasolar planets have been discovered, and it is clear that the galactic planetary census draws on a diversity greatly exceeding that exhibited by the solar system's…
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…
Energy Optimization in Extrasolar Planetary Systems: The Transition from Peas-in-a-Pod to Runaway Growth
Fred C. Adams, Konstantin Batygin, Anthony M. Bloch +1
Motivated by the trends found in the observed sample of extrasolar planets, this paper determines tidal equilibrium states for forming planetary systems --- subject to conservation…
Stellar Spin-Orbit Alignment for Kepler-9, a Multi-transiting Planetary system with Two Outer Planets Near 2:1 Resonance
Songhu Wang, Brett Addison, Debra A. Fischer +4
We present spectroscopic measurements of the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect for the planet b of Kepler-9 multi-transiting planet system. The resulting sky-projected spin-orbit angle is…
A Six-Planet System Orbiting HD 219134
Steven S. Vogt, Jennifer Burt, Stefano Meschiari +10
We present new, high-precision Doppler radial velocity (RV) data sets for the nearby K3V star HD 219134. The data include 175 velocities obtained with the HIRES Spectrograph at the…
Evidence that 1I/2017 U1 (`Oumuamua) was composed of molecular hydrogen ice
Darryl Seligman, Gregory Laughlin
`Oumuamua (I1 2017) was the first macroscopic () body observed to traverse the inner solar system on an unbound hyperbolic orbit. Its light curve displayed stron…
The 2:1 resonant exoplanetary system orbiting HD73526
C. G. Tinney, R. Paul Butler, Geoffrey W. Marcy +5
We report the detection of a second exoplanet orbiting the G6V dwarf HD73526. This second planet has an orbital period of 377 d, putting it in a 2:1 resonance with the previously k…
Warm Spitzer Photometry of the Transiting Exoplanets CoRoT-1 and CoRoT-2 at Secondary Eclipse
Drake Deming, Heather Knutson, Eric Agol +9
We measure secondary eclipses of the hot giant exoplanets CoRoT-1 at 3.6 and 4.5 microns, and CoRoT-2 at 3.6 microns, both using Warm Spitzer. We find that the Warm Spitzer mission…
Transiting Exoplanet Monitoring Project (TEMP). III. On the Relocation of the Kepler-9~b Transit
Songhu Wang, Dong-Hong Wu, Brett C. Addison +24
The Kepler-9 system harbors three known transiting planets. The system holds significant interest for several reasons. First, the outer two planets exhibit a period ratio that is c…
Constraints on the Atmospheric Circulation and Variability of the Eccentric Hot Jupiter XO-3b
Ian Wong, Heather A. Knutson, Nicolas B. Cowan +9
We report secondary eclipse photometry of the hot Jupiter XO-3b in the 4.5~m band taken with the Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) on the Spitzer Space Telescope. We measure individ…
Tilting Uranus via Secular Spin-Orbit Resonance with Planet 9
Tiger Lu, Gregory Laughlin
Uranus' startlingly large obliquity of 98 degrees has yet to admit a satisfactory explanation. The most widely accepted hypothesis involving a giant impactor that tipped Uranus ont…
On the Anomalous Acceleration of 1I/2017 U1 `Oumuamua
Darryl Seligman, Gregory Laughlin, Konstantin Batygin
We show that the photometric period and the astrometrically measured non-gravitational acceleration (at $r\sim1…
Information Transmission Between Financial Markets in Chicago and New York
Gregory Laughlin, Anthony Aguirre, Joseph Grundfest
High frequency trading has led to widespread efforts to reduce information propagation delays between physically distant exchanges. Using relativistically correct millisecond-resol…
Searching for Terrestrial Planets Orbiting in the Habitable Zone of Ultra-Cool Stars and Brown Dwarfs
Brice-Olivier Demory, Sara Seager, Jack Lissauer +11
We propose to use Kepler in 2-wheel mode to conduct a detailed search for Earth-sized planets orbiting ultra-cool stars and brown dwarfs (spectral types from M7 to L3). This popula…
The Lick-Carnegie Exoplanet Survey: HD32963 -- A New Jupiter Analog Orbiting a Sun-like Star
Dominick Rowan, Stefano Meschiari, Gregory Laughlin +10
We present a set of 109 new, high-precision Keck/HIRES radial velocity (RV) observations for the solar-type star HD 32963. Our dataset reveals a candidate planetary signal with a p…
EXPRES I. HD~3651 an Ideal RV Benchmark
John M. Brewer, Debra A. Fischer, Ryan T. Blackman +10
The next generation of exoplanet-hunting spectrographs should deliver up to an order of magnitude improvement in radial velocity precision over the standard 1 m/s state of the art.…
A Scientometric Prediction of the Discovery of the First Potentially Habitable Planet with a Mass Similar to Earth
Samuel Arbesman, Gregory Laughlin
The search for a habitable extrasolar planet has long interested scientists, but only recently have the tools become available to search for such planets. In the past decades, the…
Secondary Eclipse Photometry of WASP-4b with Warm Spitzer
Ingrid M. Beerer, Heather A. Knutson, Adam Burrows +10
We present photometry of the giant extrasolar planet WASP-4b at 3.6 and 4.5 micron taken with the Infrared Array Camera on board the Spitzer Space Telescope as part of Spitzer's ex…
The Prospects for Hurricane-like Vortices in Protoplanetary Disks
Konstantin Gerbig, Gregory Laughlin
When ice on the surface of dust grains in protoplanetary disk sublimates, it adds its latent heat of water sublimation to the surrounding flow. Drawing on the analogy provided by t…
Relativistic Effects in Extrasolar Planetary Systems
Fred C. Adams, Gregory Laughlin
This paper considers general relativistic (GR) effects in currently observed extrasolar planetary systems. Although GR corrections are small, they can compete with secular interact…
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite
George R. Ricker, Joshua N. Winn, Roland Vanderspek +55
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will search for planets transiting bright and nearby stars. TESS has been selected by NASA for launch in 2017 as an Astrophysics Ex…
3.6 and 4.5 m Phase Curves of the Highly-Irradiated Eccentric Hot Jupiter WASP-14b
Ian Wong, Heather A. Knutson, Nikole K. Lewis +14
We present full-orbit phase curve observations of the eccentric () transiting hot Jupiter WASP-14b obtained in the 3.6 and 4.5 m bands using the \textit{Spitzer Spa…
The N2K Consortium. VII. Atmospheric Parameters of 1907 Metal-Rich Stars: Finding Planet-Search Targets
Sarah E. Robinson, S. Mark Ammons, Katherine A. Kretke +4
We report high-precision atmospheric parameters for 1907 stars in the N2K low-resolution spectroscopic survey, designed to identify metal-rich FGK dwarfs likely to harbor detectabl…
The Hunt for Planet Nine: Atmosphere, Spectra, Evolution, and Detectability
Jonathan J. Fortney, Mark S. Marley, Gregory Laughlin +7
We investigate the physical characteristics of the Solar System's proposed Planet Nine using modeling tools with a heritage in studying Uranus and Neptune. For a range of plausible…