Physics Colloquium - Professor David Charbonneau

Abstract

When exoplanets transit their parent stars, we are granted an unparalleled opportunity to detect their presence and study their bulk properties. I will review recent analyses of data from the NASA Kepler Mission to deduce the rate of occurrence of small planets. I will then present follow up measurements of the acceleration of a subset of the host stars, which allows us to estimate the planetary masses and hence densities. Finally, I will discuss recent findings from the MEarth Project and the NASA TESS Mission, which seek to discover the most spectroscopically accessible terrestrial exoplanets. Our recent discovery of a temperate rocky world orbiting a nearby small star provides an unprecedented opportunity to detect the molecules present in the atmosphere of a terrestrial exoplanet.