Issue 3 - July 2011

HEADLINES

1. Creating a Future: A Message from the Program Manager
2. Merging Missions for a Super Space Telescope: ExEP Science Report
3. Tallying Up the Transits: Kepler Data Piling Up
4. Getting Busy with WFIRST
5. Seeing Double with LBTI
6. Violent Youth: Simulations of Planet Formation
7. Hurricanes on Hot Jupiters
8. Strange New Worlds: A Huge Success
9. Exo Credit - Students "Explore Strange New Worlds"
10. ExoToon: Hula-Transit

1. Creating a Future: A Message from the Program Manager

Dear Exoplaneteers,

I am writing on the eve of the ExoPAG Meeting #4 to be held in Alexandria, VA, for the express purpose of creating the future of exoplanet science. Three weeks ago, at the very successful conference "Exploring Strange New Worlds" in Flagstaff, one of the participants exclaimed "Thanks to Kepler, we now have more exoplanets than we have exoplaneteers!". The time is right for NASA's next major thrust in astronomy to take shape as a "New Worlds" mission for the next decade, and ExEP, working with the science community through the ExoPAG, is intent on making that happen. Read More...

2. Merging Missions for a Super Space Telescope: ExEP Science Report

Following up on the resolution by the Exoplanet Program Analysis Group (ExoPAG) in early January 2011, that our planning for a direct imaging mission in the 2020s should include the UVOIR community, there was a joint one-day meeting on 26 April, at STScI, of folks from both the COPAG and ExoPAG areas, to begin the dialogue. Briefly, the participants agreed that it is worthwhile to pursue thinking about the science goals of a joint mission, and they agreed to focus on two architectures to give us specific issues to address: (a) a 4-m monolithic telescope with an internal coronagraph, or alternatively an 8x3.5-m one similar to the TPF-C design; and (b) an 8-m segmented telescope that relies on an external occulter. Presentations and a meeting summary are at http://exep.jpl.nasa.gov/exopag/exopagCopagJointMeeting/. The meeting received publicity, even before the event, in a Nature article, at http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110427/full/472402a.html. Read More...

3. Tallying Up the Transits: Kepler Data Piling Up

Planet detections continue to accumulate as the last month of the ninth quarter of observations was sent to Earth and Kepler rolled into its summer attitude on June 26th. Pipeline data processing has now begun combining multiple quarters of data for its transit search. Multi-quarter search allows detection of smaller planets, as more transits are added together, and planets with longer periods. Combined analysis of quarters 1 through 8 has allowed detection of three transits (sufficient for large planets) for periods as long as 243 days and 4 transits (needed for smaller planets like Earth) for periods as long as 182 days. Many new candidates are emerging from the transit search and are being passed to the Kepler Follow-up Program, now half-way through its third season, for confirmation. Lists of these new candidates will appear with the next Kepler data release. Papers announcing more than 25 new confirmed planets are in preparation for publication this summer and fall. Information on confirmed planets appears on the Kepler web site as papers are published (http://kepler.nasa.gov/Mission/discoveries). The first Kepler Science Conference will be held at NASA Ames Research Center on December 5-9, 2011 (http://kepler.nasa.gov/Science/ForScientists/keplerconference). The next set of Kepler Participating Scientists has been selected and the awardees will be made public in July. Kepler continues to operating normally.

4. Getting Busy with WFIRST

The WFIRST mission study is going great guns. We have now had three meetings of the Science Definition Team (SDT). The co-chairs of the SDT are Drs. Jim Green and Paul Schechter, with full membership given at http://wfirst.gsfc.nasa.gov/. A preliminary design of the mission is now in hand, very much along the lines laid out in the New Worlds, New Horizons Decadal Survey. An interim report is being prepared to present to Dr. Jon Morse at NASA HQ on June 29. A presentation on the mission study will be given at the STScI Wide-Field Surveys workshop by Dr. Green in mid-June. The project work on the mission is shared between Goddard and JPL, and an excellent partnership has been formed between the centers.

5. Seeing Double with LBTI

The Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) consists of two 8.4-meter telescopes on a common mount. In addition to single-telescope operations, this configuration is ideal for high angular resolution astrophysics; coherently combining the light from both telescopes results in the resolving power of an equivalent telescope of 22.7-meter diameter. NASA funds the development of the Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer (LBTI, P.I.: Phil Hinz, University of Arizona), which enables interferometric imaging and nulling in the thermal infrared. Nulling at N-band (8-14 microns) will enable the study of dust clouds around nearby main sequence stars with unprecedented sensitivity, down to dust levels several times that currently present in our Solar system (two orders of magnitude improvement over existing capabilities, on the ground or in space). This information is required in order to design future space missions that will directly image and characterize exo-Earths. The LBTI instrument also houses a shorter wavelength detector (3-5 microns, funded by the National Science Foundation), which is ideally suited for the direct detection and spectroscopy of warm giant exoplanets. The LBTI obtained its first (seeing limited) fringes in October 2010. Commissioning, including operations using the adaptive optics systems on each telescope, will continue through Fall 2011. Transition into science operations is expected to start in Spring 2012, beginning with the execution of the exo-zodi characterization Key Science Program, led by P.I. Phil Hinz. It is anticipated that the program will include interested members of the exo-planet community via a call for participation to be issued in Fall 2011.

6. Violent Youth: Simulations of Planet Formation

Our understanding of planet formation is continuously being shaped and challenged by observations of the rich diversity of planets and planetary systems. Theorists and observers try to use this information to build a flexible picture of planet formation that can account for many outcomes. My contribution to this effort is investigating the earliest stages of planet formation and how this connects with star formation. During a star's birth, gas motions in the star's natal cloud are amplified by gravitational collapse. This leads to the formation of a protoplanetary disk, a disk of gas, ice, and dust from which planets form. I use supercomputer simulations to explore the evolution of these disks during their formation, a period during which they are still being fed by gas from the star's birth cloud. During this time, violent instabilities can arise due to the disk's own gravity. These instabilities can affect the chemistry in the disk and create observable structure (see http://aaroncboley.net under Posters and http://arxiv.org/abs/1102.4408). If the instabilities are strong enough, spiral arms could fragment (http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/videos_science.html; http://aaroncboley.net under Simulation Movies) to form very massive planets on long-period orbits or even brown dwarfs, which bridge the mass range between planets and the lowest-mass stars. These early stages may even leave a footprint on debris disks, the remnants of the planet formation process (http://astro.berkeley.edu/~kalas/disksite/pages/gallery.html)

If you're interested in applying for a Sagan Fellowship, you can find details on the program at http://nexsci.caltech.edu/sagan/. The application deadline for the 2012 Fellowships is November 3rd 2011 at 4PM PST.

7. Hurricanes on Hot Jupiters

We've spent many decades working to understand the atmospheres of the planets in our solar system and just in the last ten years we are now beginning to extend that knowledge to encompass the atmospheres of exoplanets, many of which are quite unlike anything we've seen before. I study a particular class of gas giants called hot Jupiters, which are exoplanets that orbit several stellar radii away from their host stars. The intense stellar irradiation that blasts the permanent day sides of these planets drives atmospheric winds that we expect should have speeds on the order of one kilometer per second. Even more exciting than the existence of such an exotic type of planet are the observations that can measure direct properties of their atmospheres, such as the day and night side temperatures. These data motivate and constrain the three-dimensional numerical simulations I use to model hot Jupiter atmospheres. Since we are really pushing atmospheric dynamics into a new regime, we are having to do a lot of work to check that our models are reliable, and to understand why we get the results that we do. With the code I've developed I am exploring the various physical processes that could be at work in hot Jupiter atmospheres, as well as the diversity we see between different planets. For more information on Emily's research, see www.lpl.arizona.edu/~emily

If you're interested in applying for a Sagan Fellowship, you can find details on the program at http://nexsci.caltech.edu/sagan/. The application deadline for the 2012 Fellowships is November 3rd 2011 at 4PM PST.

8. Strange New Worlds: A Huge Success!

NExScI and ExEP hosted and ran the hugely successful "Exploring Strange New Worlds: From Giant Planets to Super-Earths" conference in May in Flagstaff, AZ. The conference had over 250 participants from 19 countries. Presentations included all aspects of exoplanet science, recent results from the Kepler, Spitzer, and CoRoT missions, ground surveys, new theoretical modeling of exoplanet data to characterize exoplanet composition, atmospheres, abundance, and formation, and even debates about how best to plan for JWST exoplanet observations.

The program included a public lecture given by Dr. Geoff Marcy attended by over 350 people, an evening reception at Lowell Observatory, tours to both the Barringer Meteor Crater and Anderson Mesa, and a banquet at the Forest Highlands Country Club with a presentation on archeoastronomy in northern Arizona.

Presentation slides and pictures are posted on the conference website: http://nexsci.caltech.edu/conferences/Flagstaff/index.shtml Geoff Marcy's lecture and radio interview can be watched and heard online at: http://nexsci.caltech.edu/conferences/Flagstaff/marcy/index.shtml

9. Exo Credit - Students "Explore New Worlds"

PlanetQuest E/PO collaborated with the Flagstaff, Arizona, and Santa Clarita, California school districts on the "Exploring New Words" exoplanet education initiative. In two separate events, nearly 1,000 middle and high school students participated in hands-on demonstrations of exoplanet finding techniques and science with NASA scientists and engineers. Each daylong program placed a heavy emphasis on imagination, possibility, and methodology, with the intent to inspire and inform students about exoplanet science. For more information, contact Anya Biferno abiferno@jpl.nasa.gov.

10. ExoToon: Hula-Transit

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