Issue 15 - May 2015

The high quality data available from Kepler unveils not only the variability during transit (primary eclipse) and secondary eclipse, but for the first time also the variability throughout the entire orbital phase of star-planet systems and stellar binaries. My research is focused on studying Kepler’s visible-light phase curves which contain information about the companion’s atmosphere and the tidal interaction between the two objects. In addition I am using orbital phase modulations to detect non-eclipsing systems. The sensitivity to non-eclipsing systems in combination with the availability of data for a large number of stars from Kepler (and K2) allows to detect intrinsically rare objects, like short period brown dwarf and white dwarf companions. A more detailed description of my work is available on my homepage: http://web.gps.caltech.edu/~shporer/