| 1. |
- Rauer, H., et al.
(författare)
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The PLATO 2.0 mission
- 2014
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Ingår i: Experimental astronomy. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0922-6435 .- 1572-9508. ; 38:1-2, s. 249-330
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- PLATO 2.0 has recently been selected for ESA's M3 launch opportunity (2022/24). Providing accurate key planet parameters (radius, mass, density and age) in statistical numbers, it addresses fundamental questions such as: How do planetary systems form and evolve? Are there other systems with planets like ours, including potentially habitable planets? The PLATO 2.0 instrument consists of 34 small aperture telescopes (32 with 25 s readout cadence and 2 with 2.5 s cadence) providing a wide field-of-view (2232 deg(2)) and a large photometric magnitude range (4-16 mag). It focuses on bright (4-11 mag) stars in wide fields to detect and characterize planets down to Earth-size by photometric transits, whose masses can then be determined by ground-based radial-velocity follow-up measurements. Asteroseismology will be performed for these bright stars to obtain highly accurate stellar parameters, including masses and ages. The combination of bright targets and asteroseismology results in high accuracy for the bulk planet parameters: 2 %, 4-10 % and 10 % for planet radii, masses and ages, respectively. The planned baseline observing strategy includes two long pointings (2-3 years) to detect and bulk characterize planets reaching into the habitable zone (HZ) of solar-like stars and an additional step-and-stare phase to cover in total about 50 % of the sky. PLATO 2.0 will observe up to 1,000,000 stars and detect and characterize hundreds of small planets, and thousands of planets in the Neptune to gas giant regime out to the HZ. It will therefore provide the first large-scale catalogue of bulk characterized planets with accurate radii, masses, mean densities and ages. This catalogue will include terrestrial planets at intermediate orbital distances, where surface temperatures are moderate. Coverage of this parameter range with statistical numbers of bulk characterized planets is unique to PLATO 2.0. The PLATO 2.0 catalogue allows us to e. g.: - complete our knowledge of planet diversity for low-mass objects, - correlate the planet mean density-orbital distance distribution with predictions from planet formation theories,- constrain the influence of planet migration and scattering on the architecture of multiple systems, and - specify how planet and system parameters change with host star characteristics, such as type, metallicity and age. The catalogue will allow us to study planets and planetary systems at different evolutionary phases. It will further provide a census for small, low-mass planets. This will serve to identify objects which retained their primordial hydrogen atmosphere and in general the typical characteristics of planets in such a low-mass, low-density range. Planets detected by PLATO 2.0 will orbit bright stars and many of them will be targets for future atmosphere spectroscopy exploring their atmospheres. Furthermore, the mission has the potential to detect exomoons, planetary rings, binary and Trojan planets. The planetary science possible with PLATO 2.0 is complemented by its impact on stellar and galactic science via asteroseismology as well as light curves of all kinds of variable stars, together with observations of stellar clusters of different ages. This will allow us to improve stellar models and study stellar activity. A large number of well-known ages from red giant stars will probe the structure and evolution of our Galaxy. Asteroseismic ages of bright stars for different phases of stellar evolution allow calibrating stellar age-rotation relationships. Together with the results of ESA's Gaia mission, the results of PLATO 2.0 will provide a huge legacy to planetary, stellar and galactic science.
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| 2. |
- Wakelam, V., et al.
(författare)
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A KINETIC DATABASE FOR ASTROCHEMISTRY (KIDA)
- 2012
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Ingår i: Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series. - : American Astronomical Society. - 0067-0049 .- 1538-4365. ; 199:1, s. 21-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We present a novel chemical database for gas-phase astrochemistry. Named the KInetic Database for Astrochemistry (KIDA), this database consists of gas-phase reactions with rate coefficients and uncertainties that will be vetted to the greatest extent possible. Submissions of measured and calculated rate coefficients are welcome, and will be studied by experts before inclusion into the database. Besides providing kinetic information for the interstellar medium, KIDA is planned to contain such data for planetary atmospheres and for circumstellar envelopes. Each year, a subset of the reactions in the database (kida.uva) will be provided as a network for the simulation of the chemistry of dense interstellar clouds with temperatures between 10 K and 300 K. We also provide a code, named Nahoon, to study the time-dependent gas-phase chemistry of zero-dimensional and one-dimensional interstellar sources.
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| 3. |
- Bouchy, F., et al.
(författare)
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WASP-21b : a hot-Saturn exoplanet transiting a thick disc star
- 2010
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Ingår i: Astronomy and Astrophysics. - : EDP Sciences. - 0004-6361 .- 1432-0746. ; 519, s. A98-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We report the discovery of WASP-21b, a new transiting exoplanet discovered by the Wide Angle Search for Planets ( WASP) Consortium and established and characterized with the FIES, SOPHIE, CORALIE and HARPS fiber-fed echelle spectrographs. A 4.3-d period, 1.1% transit depth and 3.4-h duration are derived for WASP-21b using SuperWASP-North and high precision photometric observations at the Liverpool Telescope. Simultaneous fitting to the photometric and radial velocity data with a Markov Chain Monte Carlo procedure leads to a planet in the mass regime of Saturn. With a radius of 1.07 R-Jup and mass of 0.30 M-Jup, WASP-21b has a density close to 0.24 rho(Jup) corresponding to the distribution peak at low density of transiting gaseous giant planets. With a host star metallicity [Fe/H] of -0.46, WASP-21b strengthens the correlation between planetary density and host star metallicity for the five known Saturn-like transiting planets. Furthermore there are clear indications that WASP-21b is the first transiting planet belonging to the thick disc.
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| 4. |
- Simpson, E. K., et al.
(författare)
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Independent Discovery of the Transiting Exoplanet HAT-P-14b
- 2011
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Ingår i: Astronomical Journal. - : American Astronomical Society. - 0004-6256 .- 1538-3881. ; 141:5, s. 161-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We present SuperWASP observations of HAT-P-14b, a hot Jupiter discovered by Torres et al. The planet was found independently by the SuperWASP team and named WASP-27b after follow-up observations had secured the discovery, but prior to the publication by Torres et al. Our analysis of HAT-P-14/WASP-27 is in good agreement with the values found by Torres et al. and we provide additional evidence against astronomical false positives. Due to the brightness of the host star, V-mag = 10, HAT-P-14b is an attractive candidate for further characterization observations. The planet has a high impact parameter and the primary transit is close to grazing. This could readily reveal small deviations in the orbital parameters indicating the presence of a third body in the system, which may be causing the small but significant orbital eccentricity. Our results suggest that the planet may undergo a grazing secondary eclipse. However, even a non-detection would tightly constrain the system parameters.
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| 5. |
- Simpson, E. K., et al.
(författare)
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The spin-orbit angles of the transiting exoplanets WASP-1b, WASP-24b, WASP-38b and HAT-P-8b from Rossiter-McLaughlin observations
- 2011
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Ingår i: Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 414:4, s. 3023-3035
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We present observations of the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect for the transiting exoplanets WASP-1b, WASP-24b, WASP-38b and HAT-P-8b, and deduce the orientations of the planetary orbits with respect to the host stars' rotation axes. The planets WASP-24b, WASP-38b and HAT-P-8b appear to move in prograde orbits and be well aligned, having sky-projected spin-orbit angles consistent with zero: lambda = -4 degrees.7 +/- 4 degrees.0, 15 degrees(+43)(-33) and -9 degrees.7(-7.7)(+9.0), respectively. The host stars have T(eff) < 6250K and conform with the trend of cooler stars having low obliquities. WASP-38b is a massive planet on a moderately long period, eccentric orbit so may be expected to have a misaligned orbit given the high obliquities measured in similar systems. However, we find no evidence for a large spin-orbit angle. By contrast, WASP-1b joins the growing number of misaligned systems and has an almost polar orbit, lambda = -79 degrees.0(-4.3)(+4.5). It is neither very massive, eccentric nor orbiting a hot host star, and therefore does not share the properties of many other misaligned systems.
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| 6. |
- Simpson, E. K., et al.
(författare)
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WASP-37b : A 1.8 MJ exoplanet transiting a metal-poor star
- 2011
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Ingår i: Astronomical Journal. - : American Astronomical Society. - 0004-6256 .- 1538-3881. ; 141:1, s. 8-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We report on the discovery of WASP-37b, a transiting hot Jupiter orbiting an m(v) = 12.7 G2-type dwarf, with a period of 3.577469 +/- 0.000011 d, transit epoch T-0 = 2455338.6188 +/- 0.0006 (HJD; dates throughout the paper are given in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)), and a transit duration 0.1304(-0.0017)(+0.0018) d. The planetary companion has a mass M-p = 1.80 +/- 0.17 M-J and radius R-p = 1.16(-0.06)(+0.07) R-J, yielding a mean density of 1.15(-0.15)(+0.12) rho(J). From a spectral analysis, we find that the host star has M-star = 0.925 +/- 0.120 M-circle dot, R-star = 1.003 +/- 0.053 R-circle dot, T-eff = 5800 +/- 150 K, and [Fe/H] = -0.40 +/- 0.12. WASP-37 is therefore one of the lowest metallicity stars to host a transiting planet.
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