Short-period planets were a gift from nature that allowed for the rapid accclcration of exoplanetary science. They are more readily studied than long-period planets, and their existence and orbital properties pose interesting questions. The shortest-period giant planets have orbits that are formally unstable to tidal evolution - they should be spiralling into their host stars - and indeed there is now evidence for orbital decay of at least one hot Jupiter. In addition, the Kepler mission revealed a population of Earth-sized planets with periods as short as 4 hours. How did they form? Are they related to hot Jupiters? I will present our recent observational efforts to try and answer these questions. I will also present some early results from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which will identify thousands of short-period planets around the nearest and brightest stars in the sky.
Yale Astronomy & Astrophysics Colloquium - Josh Winn
Event time:
Thursday, October 11, 2018 - 2:30pm
Speaker:
Josh Winn
Speaker Institution:
Princeton University
Talk Title:
TESS and the Shortest-Period Planets
Event description:
Location:
Watson Center A-51
60 Sachem Street
New Haven, CT
06511
Open to:
General Public