The architectures of multiple planet systems can provide valuable constraints on models of planet formation, including orbital migration, and excitation of orbital eccentricities and inclinations. ...NASA's Kepler mission has identified 1235 transiting planet candidates (Borcuki et al 2011). The method of transit timing variations (TTVs) has already confirmed 7 planets in two planetary systems (Holman et al. 2010; Lissauer et al. 2011a). We perform a transit timing analysis of the Kepler planet candidates. We find that at least ~12% of planet candidates currently suitable for TTV analysis show evidence suggestive of TTVs, representing at least ~65 TTV candidates. In all cases, the time span of observations must increase for TTVs to provide strong constraints on planet masses and/or orbits, as expected based on n-body integrations of multiple transiting planet candidate systems (assuming circular and coplanar orbits). We find that the fraction of planet candidates showing TTVs in this data set does not vary significantly with the number of transiting planet candidates per star, suggesting significant mutual inclinations and that many stars with a single transiting planet should host additional non-transiting planets. We anticipate that Kepler could confirm (or reject) at least ~12 systems with multiple transiting planet candidates via TTVs. Thus, TTVs will provide a powerful tool for confirming transiting planets and characterizing the orbital dynamics of low-mass planets. If Kepler observations were extended to at least six years, then TTVs would provide much more precise constraints on the dynamics of systems with multiple transiting planets and would become sensitive to planets with orbital periods extending into the habitable zone of solar-type stars.
Since the discovery of the first extrasolar giant planets around Sun-like stars, evolving observational capabilities have brought us closer to the detection of true Earth analogues. The size of an ...exoplanet can be determined when it periodically passes in front of (transits) its parent star, causing a decrease in starlight proportional to its radius. The smallest exoplanet hitherto discovered has a radius 1.42 times that of the Earth's radius (R Earth), and hence has 2.9 times its volume. Here we report the discovery of two planets, one Earth-sized (1.03R Earth) and the other smaller than the Earth (0.87R Earth), orbiting the star Kepler-20, which is already known to host three other, larger, transiting planets. The gravitational pull of the new planets on the parent star is too small to measure with current instrumentation. We apply a statistical method to show that the likelihood of the planetary interpretation of the transit signals is more than three orders of magnitude larger than that of the alternative hypothesis that the signals result from an eclipsing binary star. Theoretical considerations imply that these planets are rocky, with a composition of iron and silicate. The outer planet could have developed a thick water vapour atmosphere.
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 signal of 420+/-15 m.s-1. From a transit-based estimate of the host star's mean density, combined with an estimate of the stellar effective temperature T_eff=5630+/-100 K from high-resolution spectra, we infer a stellar host mass of 1.061+/-0.067 M_sun and a stellar radius of 1.019+/-0.033 R_jup. We estimate the planet mass and radius to be Mp=2.450+/-0.114 M_jup and Rp=1.312+/-0.018 R_jup and a planet density near 1.35 g.cm-3. The host star is active, with dark spots that are frequently occulted by the planet. The continuous monitoring of the star reveals a stellar rotation period of 11.89 days, 8 times the the planet's orbital period; this period ratio produces stroboscopic effects on the occulted starspots. The temporal pattern of these spot-crossing events shows that the planet's orbit is prograde and the star's obliquity is smaller than 15 deg. We detected planetary occultations of Kepler-17b with both the Kepler and Spitzer Space Telescopes. We use these observations to constrain the eccentricity, e, and find that it is consistent with a circular orbit (e<0.0011). The brightness temperatures of the planet the infrared bandpasses are T_3.6um=1880+/-100 K and T4.5um=1770+/-150 K. We measure the optical geometric albedo A_g in the Kepler bandpass and find A_g = 0.10+/-0.02. The observations are best described by atmospheric models for which most of the incident energy is re-radiated away from the day side.
We present the discovery of a hot Jupiter transiting an F star in a close visual (0.3" sky projected angular separation) binary system. The dilution of the host star's light by the nearly equal ...magnitude stellar companion (~ 0.5 magnitudes fainter) significantly affects the derived planetary parameters, and if left uncorrected, leads to an underestimate of the radius and mass of the planet by 10% and 60%, respectively. Other published exoplanets, which have not been observed with high-resolution imaging, could similarly have unresolved stellar companions and thus have incorrectly derived planetary parameters. Kepler-14b (KOI-98) has a period of P = 6.790 days and correcting for the dilution, has a mass of Mp = 8.40 +0.19-0.18 MJ and a radius of Rp = 1.136 +0.073-0.054 RJ, yielding a mean density of rho = 7.1 +- 1.1 g cm-3.
HD 3167 is a bright (V = 8.9), nearby KO star observed by the NASA K2 mission (EPIC 220383386), hosting two small, short-period transiting planets. Here we present the results of a multi-site, ...multi-instrument radial-velocity campaign to characterize the HD 3167 system. The masses of the transiting planets are 5.02 +/- 0.38 M-circle plus for HD 3167 b, a hot super-Earth with a likely rocky composition (rho(b) = 5.6(-1.43)(+2.15) g cm(-3)), and 9.80(-1.24)(+1.30) M-circle plus for HD 3167 c, a warm sub-Neptune with a likely substantial volatile complement (rho(c) = 1.97(-0.59)(+0.94) g cm(-3)). We explore the possibility of atmospheric composition analysis and determine that planet c is amenable to transmission spectroscopy measurements, and planet b is a potential thermal emission target. We detect a third, non-transiting planet, HD 3167 d, with a period of 8.509 +/- 0.045 d (between planets b and c) and a minimum mass of 6.90 +/- 0.71 M-circle plus. We are able to constrain the mutual inclination of planet d with planets b and c: we rule out mutual inclinations below 1.degrees 3 because we do not observe transits of planet d. From 1.degrees 3 to 40 degrees, there are viewing geometries invoking special nodal configurations, which result in planet d not transiting some fraction of the time.
Recently, there have been intense industrial efforts in parallel optical interconnection technology2 to overcome the well known copper barrier problems in high speed (- 1 Gb/sec) data communication ...and processing networks of multi-processor systems. A 18x1 edge-emitting uncooled InP laser array3 (Figure 1) and a 32x1 surface emitting laser array4 are bump bonded to silicon optical bench piece with the help of liquid flux solder reflow process. Effects of liquid flux on some device characteristics are presented in Table 1 a and b.
