The K2 Mission: Characterization and Early Results Howell, Steve B.; Sobeck, Charlie; Haas, Michael ...
Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific,
04/2014, Volume:
126, Issue:
938
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The K2 mission will make use of the Kepler spacecraft and its assets to expand upon Kepler's groundbreaking discoveries in the fields of exoplanets and astrophysics through new and exciting ...observations. K2 will use an innovative way of operating the spacecraft to observe target fields along the ecliptic for the next 2-3 years. Early science commissioning observations have shown an estimated photometric precision near 400 ppm in a single 30 minute observation, and a 6-hr photometric precision of 80 ppm (both at V = 12). The K2 mission offers long-term, simultaneous optical observation of thousands of objects at a precision far better than is achievable from ground-based telescopes. Ecliptic fields will be observed for approximately 75 days enabling a unique exoplanet survey which fills the gaps in duration and sensitivity between the Kepler and TESS missions, and offers pre-launch exoplanet target identification for JWST transit spectroscopy. Astrophysics observations with K2 will include studies of young open clusters, bright stars, galaxies, supernovae, and asteroseismology.
While brown dwarfs show similarities to stars early in their lives, their spin evolutions are much more akin to those of planets. We have used light curves from the K2 mission to measure new rotation ...periods for 18 young brown dwarfs in the Taurus star-forming region. Our sample spans masses from 0.02 to 0.08 M and has been characterized extensively in the past. To search for periods, we utilize three different methods (autocorrelation, periodogram, Gaussian processes). The median period for brown dwarfs with disks is twice as long as for those without (3.1 versus 1.6 days), a signature of rotational braking by the disk, albeit with small numbers. With an overall median period of 1.9 days, brown dwarfs in Taurus rotate slower than their counterparts in somewhat older (3-10 Myr) star-forming regions, consistent with spin-up of the latter due to contraction and angular momentum conservation, a clear sign that disk braking overall is inefficient and/or temporary in this mass domain. We confirm the presence of a linear increase of the typical rotation period as a function of mass in the substellar regime. The rotational velocities, when calculated forward to the age of the solar system, assuming angular momentum conservation, fit the known spin-mass relation for solar system planets and extra-solar planetary-mass objects. This spin-mass trend holds over six orders of magnitude in mass, including objects from several different formation paths. Our result implies that brown dwarfs by and large retain their primordial angular momentum through the first few Myr of their evolution.
ABSTRACT
We present a novel retrieval technique that attempts to model phase curve observations of exoplanets more realistically and reliably, which we call the 2.5-dimensional (2.5D) approach. In ...our 2.5D approach we retrieve the vertical temperature profile and mean gaseous abundance of a planet at all longitudes and latitudes simultaneously, assuming that the temperature or composition, x, at a particular longitude and latitude (Λ, Φ) is given by $x(\Lambda ,\Phi) = \bar{x} + (x(\Lambda ,0) - \bar{x})\cos ^n\Phi$, where $\bar{x}$ is the mean of the morning and evening terminator values of x(Λ, 0), and n is an assumed coefficient. We compare our new 2.5D scheme with the more traditional 1D approach, which assumes the same temperature profile and gaseous abundances at all points on the visible disc of a planet for each individual phase observation, using a set of synthetic phase curves generated from a GCM-based simulation. We find that our 2.5D model fits these data more realistically than the 1D approach, confining the hotter regions of the planet more closely to the dayside. We then apply both models to WASP-43b phase curve observations of HST/WFC3 and Spitzer/IRAC. We find that the dayside of WASP-43b is apparently much hotter than the nightside and show that this could be explained by the presence of a thick cloud on the nightside with a cloud top at pressure <0.2 bar. We further show that while the mole fraction of water vapour is reasonably well constrained to (1–10) × 10−4, the abundance of CO is very difficult to constrain with these data since it is degenerate with temperature and prone to possible systematic radiometric differences between the HST/WFC3 and Spitzer/IRAC observations. Hence, it is difficult to reliably constrain C/O.
ABSTRACT We present the discovery in Kepler's K2 mission observations and our follow-up radial velocity (RV) observations from Keck/HIRES for four eclipsing binary (EB) star systems in the young ...benchmark Pleiades and Hyades clusters. Based on our modeling results, we announce two new low mass ( M tot < 0.6 M ) EBs among Pleiades members (HCG 76 and MHO 9) and we report on two previously known Pleiades binaries that are also found to be EB systems (HII 2407 and HD 23642). We measured the masses of the binary HCG 76 to 2.5% precision, and the radii to 4.5% precision, which together with the precise effective temperatures yield an independent Pleiades distance of 132 5 pc. We discuss another EB toward the Pleiades that is a possible but unlikely Pleiades cluster member (AK II 465). The two new confirmed Pleiades systems extend the mass range of Pleiades EB components to 0.2-2 M . Our initial measurements of the fundamental stellar parameters for the Pleiades EBs are discussed in the context of the current stellar models and the nominal cluster isochrone, finding good agreement with the stellar models of Baraffe et al. at the nominal Pleiades age of 120 Myr. Finally, in the Hyades, we report a new low mass eclipsing system (vA 50) that was concurrently discovered and studied by Mann et al. We confirm that the eclipse is likely caused by a Neptune-sized transiting planet, and with the additional RV constraints presented here we improve the constraint on the maximum mass of the planet to be 1.2 MJup.
CoRoT-7 is an 11 th magnitude K-star whose light curve shows transits with a depth of 0.3 mmag and a period of 0.854 d, superimposed on variability at the 1 per cent level, due to the modulation of ...evolving active regions with the star's 23-d rotation period. In this paper, we revisit the published HARPS radial-velocity (RV) measurements of the object, which were previously used to estimate the companion mass, but have been the subject of ongoing debate.
We build a realistic model of the star's activity during the HARPS observations, by fitting simultaneously the linewidth (as measured by the width of the cross-correlation function) and the line bisector, and use it to evaluate the contribution of activity to the RV variations. The data show clear evidence of errors above the level of the formal uncertainties, which are accounted for neither by activity nor by any plausible planet model and which increase rapidly with a decreasing signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) of the spectra. We cite evidence of similar systematics in mid-S/N spectra of other targets obtained with HARPS and other high-precision RV spectrographs, and discuss possible sources. Allowing for these, we re-evaluate the semi-amplitude of the CoRoT-7b signal, finding Kb
= 1.6 ± 1.3 m s−1, a tentative detection with a much reduced significance (1.2σ) compared to previous estimates. We also argue that the combined presence of activity and additional errors precludes a meaningful search for additional low-mass companions, despite previous claims to the contrary.
Taken at face value, our analysis points to a lower density for CoRoT-7b, the 1σ mass range spanning 1-4 M ⊕ and allowing for a wide range of bulk compositions. In particular, an ice-rich composition is compatible with the RV constraints. More generally, this study highlights the importance of a realistic treatment of both activity and uncertainties, particularly in the medium S/N regime, which applies to most small planet candidates from CoRoT and Kepler.
In the past fifteen years, file sharing of digital cultural works between individuals has been at the center of a number of debates on the future of culture itself. To some, sharing constitutes ...piracy, to be fought against and eradicated. Others see it as unavoidable, and table proposals to compensate for its harmful effects. Meanwhile, little progress has been made towards addressing the real challenges facing culture in a digital world. Sharing starts from a radically different viewpoint, namely that the non-market sharing of digital works is both legitimate and useful. It supports this premise with empirical research, demonstrating that non-market sharing leads to more diversity in the attention given to various works. Taking stock of what we have learned about the cultural economy in recent years, Sharing sets out the conditions necessary for valuable cultural functions to remain sustainable in this context. Our software and datasets can be downloaded from the book site at http://www.sharing-thebook.net. On the same site, the reader can also run our models with adjusted parameters and upload datasets in order to run our algorithms for the study of diversity of attention.
Voor sommigen staat delen gelijk aan piraterij: iets wat moet worden bestreden. Anderen zien het als deel van het moderne leven en proberen de schadelijke effecten zoveel mogelijk te compenseren. Ondertussen wordt er weinig vooruitgang geboekt in het aanpakken van de echte problemen waar- mee de cultuur te maken krijgt wanneer steeds meer mensen kunnen bijdragen aan het produceren van cultureel waardevolle werken. Sharing stelt dat het niet-commercieel delen van digitale werken zowel legitiem als nuttig is, omdat het leidt tot meer diversiteit in de digitale culturele wereld. Sharing bespreekt nieuwe financieringsregelingen die geschikt zijn voor een digitale culturele sfeer waar werken vrijelijk gedeeld kunnen worden door individuen. Voor meer informatie over het boek, bezoek: www.sharing-thebook.net
Abstract The detection of planetary transits in the light curves of active stars, featuring correlated noise in the form of stellar variability, remains a challenge. Depending on the noise ...characteristics, we show that the traditional technique that consists of detrending a light curve before searching for transits alters their signal-to-noise ratio and hinders our capability to discover exoplanets transiting rapidly rotating active stars. We present nuance , an algorithm to search for transits in light curves while simultaneously accounting for the presence of correlated noise, such as stellar variability and instrumental signals. We assess the performance of nuance on simulated light curves as well as on the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite light curves of 438 rapidly rotating M dwarfs. For each data set, we compare our method to five commonly used detrending techniques followed by a search with the Box-Least-Squares algorithm. Overall, we demonstrate that nuance is the most performant method in 93% of cases, leading to both the highest number of true positives and the lowest number of false-positive detections. Although simultaneously searching for transits while modeling correlated noise is expected to be computationally expensive, we make our algorithm tractable and available as the JAX -powered Python package nuance, allowing its use on distributed environments and GPU devices. Finally, we explore the prospects offered by the nuance formalism and its use to advance our knowledge of planetary systems around active stars, both using space-based surveys and sparse ground-based observations.
We report the discovery of a repeating photometric signal from a low-mass member of the Praesepe open cluster that we interpret as a Neptune-sized transiting planet. The star is JS 183 (HSHJ 163, ...EPIC 211916756), with Teff = 3325 100 K, M* = 0.44 0.04 M , R* = 0.44 0.03 R , and . The planet has an orbital period of 10.134588 days and a radius of RP = 0.32 0.02 RJ. Since the star is faint at V = 16.5 and J = 13.3, we are unable to obtain a measured radial velocity orbit, but we can constrain the companion mass to below about 1.7 MJ, and thus well below the planetary boundary. JS 183b (since designated as K2-95b) is the second transiting planet found with K2 that resides in a several-hundred-megayear open cluster; both planets orbit mid-M dwarf stars and are approximately Neptune sized. With a well-determined stellar density from the planetary transit, and with an independently known metallicity from its cluster membership, JS 183 provides a particularly valuable test of stellar models at the fully convective boundary. We find that JS 183 is the lowest-density transit host known at the fully convective boundary, and that its very low density is consistent with current models of stars just above the fully convective boundary but in tension with the models just below the fully convective boundary.
ABSTRACT We present the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) optical transmission spectroscopy of the cool Saturn-mass exoplanet WASP-39b from 0.29-1.025 m, along ...with complementary transit observations from Spitzer IRAC at 3.6 and 4.5 m. The low density and large atmospheric pressure scale height of WASP-39b make it particularly amenable to atmospheric characterization using this technique. We detect a Rayleigh scattering slope as well as sodium and potassium absorption features; this is the first exoplanet in which both alkali features are clearly detected with the extended wings predicted by cloud-free atmosphere models. The full transmission spectrum is well matched by a clear H2-dominated atmosphere, or one containing a weak contribution from haze, in good agreement with the preliminary reduction of these data presented in Sing et al. WASP-39b is predicted to have a pressure-temperature profile comparable to that of HD 189733b and WASP-6b, making it one of the coolest transiting gas giants observed in our HST STIS survey. Despite this similarity, WASP-39b appears to be largely cloud-free, while the transmission spectra of HD 189733b and WASP-6b both indicate the presence of high altitude clouds or hazes. These observations further emphasize the surprising diversity of cloudy and cloud-free gas giant planets in short-period orbits and the corresponding challenges associated with developing predictive cloud models for these atmospheres.
We report on the results of a time-series photometric survey of M50 (NGC 2323), a ∼130 Myr open cluster, carried out using the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) 4-m Blanco telescope and ...Mosaic-II detector as part of the Monitor project. Rotation periods were derived for 812 candidate cluster members over the mass range 0.2 ≲M/M⊙≲ 1.1. The rotation period distributions show a clear mass-dependent morphology, statistically indistinguishable from those in NGC 2516 and M35 taken from the literature. Due to the availability of data from three observing runs separated by ∼10 and 1 month time-scales, we are able to demonstrate clear evidence for evolution of the photometric amplitudes, and hence spot patterns, over the 10 month gap. We are not able to constrain the time-scales for these effects in detail due to limitations imposed by the large gaps in our sampling, which also prevent the use of the phase information.
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