Exoplanets Rising

Steinn Sigurðsson has a series of posts up about this conference at his blog Dynamics of Cats. First one in series here.

Talks are being put online at conference website here.

Maybe I'm wrong, but except for Wolzczan's planets around K giants I don't see hints of additional discoveries...

There seems to be more of that kind of thing in the talks rather than the poster abstracts.

Quote :

Ballard et al 2010 on GJ436 - less than 1.5 R_Earth, IF it transits - not known to transit

IF it exists ... (GJ436c)

The relevant talk is now online - the 1.5 R_Earth is the upper limit on transiting planets around GJ 436 from the EPOXI mission. Not a claim of a planet.

Nothing new after all. And doesn't transit.

I fundamentally disagree with your dismissal of these talks as "nothing new". Certainly some of the presentations include quite a bit of information about stuff in progress, new techniques etc.

There's more to exoplanets than just adding new entries to the catalogue.

According to this entry on the Dynamics of Cats blog, the imaging and microlensing presentations had quite a bit of info on new unpublished planets. They aren't online yet though (give it a while...)

The CoRoT presentation by Magali Deleuil has some info on systems CoRoT-8, 10 and 11.

Josh Winn's presentation has some neat stuff in there: apparently some more detections of misaligned planets coming up, plus some insights into Greg Laughlin's magic powers.

Lazarus wrote:

I fundamentally disagree with your dismissal of these talks as "nothing new". Certainly some of the presentations include quite a bit of information about stuff in progress, new techniques etc.

There's more to exoplanets than just adding new entries to the catalogue.

You're right. Sometimes I'm a bit childish when I expect more planets rather more infos about planets.

Quote :

Josh Winn's presentation has some neat stuff in there: apparently some more detections of misaligned planets coming up, plus some insights into Greg Laughlin's magic powers.

This makes me ROFL.

Interesting discussion on the supposed "planet desert" in Marcy´s presentation.

Major current news:
http://online.kitp.ucsb.edu/online/exoplanets_c10/mayor/pdf/Mayor_ExoPlanetsConf_KITP.pdf
Super-Earths around M dwarfs are common >30%
http://online.kitp.ucsb.edu/online/exoplanets_c10/mayor/oh/33.jpg
http://online.kitp.ucsb.edu/online/exoplanets_c10/mayor/oh/34.jpg
eccentricities of the orbits and resonances of a small planets

Definitely the microlensing presentation has several unpublished detections in there. Imaging is mostly a review of Gliese 758, Beta Pictoris, HR 8799 and Fomalhaut, including the problems of trying to find Fomalhaut again without the Hubble ACS which is no longer working.

A very important discovery

http://scienceblogs.com/catdynamics/2010/03/kitp_imaging_and_microlensing.php

Preliminary high cadence observations from MOA suggest anomalous number of short duration lensing events - could be very wide planets, or free floaters. (Kamiya et al in prep).
If free-floating planets there are ~ 3 per star in the inner galaxy.
That is not implausible.



http://online.kitp.ucsb.edu/online/exoplanets_c10/gaudi/pdf/Gaudi_ExoPlanetsConf_KITP.pdf
Free Floating Planets(MOA Collaboration; Kamiyaet al., in prep.)
•2006-2007 data
•Excess of short events.
•0.68 expected, 12 found.
•Wide or Free-floating planets?
•Mass Ratio ~0.005
•~3 per star

Borislav wrote:

If free-floating planets there are ~ 3 per star in the inner galaxy.
That is not implausible.

If possible, the probability of detecting such planets closer Proxima Centauri WISE rises sharply.

From the mass coefficient goes that the mass of the planets about 2.5 Jupiter masses.

Sol is not in the inner galaxy, the population of rogue planets may be different out here in the galactic suburbs.

A trillion or so rogue planets in the galaxy wouldn't surprise me but that mass would. I would expect many if not most of them to be low-mass planets.

what call my attention was this:

shock planetary discovery announcement on the dynamics of cats

http://scienceblogs.com/catdynamics/2010/04/kitp_shock_planetary_discovery.php#more

if it"s true, this will be the greatest discovery of this year

er, Daniel, you did note the date that was posted right?

What's the acronym for the "French Academy for Keplerian Exoplanets"?

Or indeed the "Super Huge Interferometric Telescope"?

yeah Lazarus i see... look like there is something wrong on this post...

too good to be true...

The most ludicrous April fool ever. As that posted by NuclearVacuum (or somebody else) 1 year ago claiming detection of an exo-moon around HD 80606 b.

I hate April fools.
At least the SuperWASP team were nice to us.

Talking of April Fools, I quite liked the arXiv paper that referred to a "Lorentz violating Chuck Norris in space, breathing aether and watching galaxies with his naked eyes"

Chuck Norris detects exo-earths in Quasars with naked eye, didn't you know?

Let's quit here, or else this thread turns silly.

Quote :

There are hints of ²⁵⁶Ub* (IV) absorption lines in the spectra

There's Unobtainium in them thar hills!