Issue 7 - July 2012

HEADLINES

1. Fond Farewell
2. Help Wanted: 2 Big Scopes Looking for Honest Work
3. Ames & JPL Tic Tac Talk
4. I'm Not Dead Yet: Kepler Gets 4 More
5. Meet the LBTI'ers
6. WFIRST I Am: Concept Study Wrapping
7. Sold-out Show for Sagan Summer Confab
8. Hunting the "Super-Eccentrics"
9. Book 'em Dano: Fingerprints of Planet Formation
10. 50,000 Exo Fans Roll with EPO
11. ExoToon: Mischevious Microlensing

1. Fond Farewell

Dear Exoplaneteers,

For scientists, science never sleeps and the exoplanet results keep coming in, as was reported in the recent AAS Anchorage meeting. For us Program folks, however, the summer is an interlude between budget cycles when we don't yet know what plans we can execute in the coming year. As Doug Hudgins reported in his community letter (4/19/2012 http://exep.jpl.nasa.gov/exopag/hudginsLetter/), the decision has been taken to not issue an RFI for mission concepts as was discussed in the last Newsletter edition. It is our plan to establish... Read More...

2. Help Wanted: 2 Big Scopes Looking for Honest Work

Surely everyone knows by now that the National Reconnaissance Office donated two large (2.4-m) telescopes to NASA, and nearly every UV-optical-infrared astronomer is thinking about how to use these. This is an astounding event, and while not strictly science per se, it has the ability to affect science to come. Read up on these, and what our NASA chiefs say about it, at The New York Times and The Washington Post I was privileged to visit these telescopes recently, and was very impressed with hearing about the careful engineering that has gone into them... Read More...

3. Ames & JPL Tic Tac Talk

On 30-31 May 2012, the ExEP Technology Assessment Committee (TAC) visited the exoplanet technology efforts ongoing at both the NASA Ames Research Center and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. At Ames, Glenn Schneider (University of Arizona) described for them the EXCEDE Category 3 technology development that will be undertaken with support from the NASA Explorer Program. His team hopes to attain contrasts of 1 part in 1,000,000 at an inner working angle of 1λ/D, demonstrated first in-air at Rus Belikov's Ames Coronagraph Experiment and subsequently under-vacuum at Lockheed Martin's Palo Alto facility. This work will use Phase-Induced Amplitude Apodization. Read More...

4. I'm Not Dead Yet: Kepler Gets 4 More

The Kepler proposal for an extended mission was approved by the NASA Senior Review of Operating Missions. The Senior Review approved 4 years of mission extension with a review of progress to occur after 2 years. The mission extension will assure that the sensitivity of the Kepler exoplanet survey reaches the original mission goal of detecting Earth analogs, those are Earth-size planets is one year orbits around solar type stars. The extended mission will also increase the number of observation targets available to Guest Observers to continue the revolutionary astrophysical observations made possible by Kepler.

Planning for the mission extension is progressing... Read More...

5. Meet the LBTI'ers

The Large Binocular Telescope (LBTI, Principal Investigator Phil Hinz - University of Arizona) had two more commissioning runs in April and May 2012. Many commissioning tasks were successfully completed, among them: first true binocular mode operations with the telescope, first light on the new nulling camera array, first light on the phasing camera, first interferometry with both adaptive optics systems in closed-loop, first apodized phase plate data, and dispersed fringes. The observatory is now closed for the Arizona Monsoon season, and on-sky commissioning activities (first nulling trials) will resume in September 2012. In June 2012, a review committee finalized the selection of the new members of the science team that will be responsible for conducting the NASA key science exozodi survey with the LBTI. Please meet the science team at: http://nexsci.caltech.edu/missions/LBTI/KeySciTeam.shtml

6. WFIRST I Am: Concept Study Wrapping

The WFIRST team is finishing up a 2 years concept study for the mission which will be published this summer. The team is made up of the Project Offices at Goddard and JPL and the community Science Definition Team (http://wfirst.gsfc.nasa.gov/). The study includes two concepts call Design Reference Mission (DRM)1 and DRM2, with DRM1 more capable and DRM2 lower cost and not duplicating capabilities of Euclid, LSST and JWST.

An exciting development this month has been the announcement of the potential WFIRST usage of one of two 2.4m telescopes given to NASA by the National Reconnaissance Office. The Project offices, with community involvement, will analyze the implications of this very capable telescope on the mission requirements.

7. Sold-out Show for Sagan Summer Confab

Plans for the upcoming Sagan Summer Workshop are in full swing, and we were forced to close registration last week after we hit occupancy limits for our auditorium! The theme this year is "Working with Exoplanet Light Curves", and we're very much looking forward to welcoming the 150 participants to Caltech next month. If you haven't been able to register then you will have a second chance to see some of the workshop content, as we will be recording the lectures to post online. You'll be able to find more information after the workshop at http://nexsci.caltech.edu/workshop/2012/

The latest update to the Exoplanet Archive contains several new features including an interactive table combining confirmed planets and Kepler candidates, plotting of table columns, Kepler candidate overview pages and a viewable transit service. To see these new features and more, visit http://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/.

8. Hunting the "Super-Eccentrics"

"High-eccentricity migration" mechanisms for forming hot Jupiters have gained considerable popularity recently. In these mechanisms, the progenitors' orbital eccentricities are initially excited to extremely high values (e~0.99!), and tidal dissipation near periastron drains orbital energy. Did hot Jupiters really go through such wild journeys? We realize a striking observational expectation from high-e mechanisms: one must find a population of highly eccentric Jupiters currently undergoing migration. Stars (and their planets) are forming at a constant rate in the Galaxy, and thus the migrating Jupiters are "feeding" hot Jupiters in a steady-state "stream". Interestingly, the migrating eccentric Jupiters have the same transit probabilities as hot Jupiters, so Kepler is very sensitive to this population and should find ~5 super-eccentric (e>0.9) Jupiters. Super-eccentric Jupiters, powered by tide, are also super luminous (100-1000 x L_Jupiter) and suitable for direct imaging. High-e mechanisms are invoked to form close binary stars too. From the latest Kepler data release, we have found the expected stream of highly eccentric binaries. The hunt for super-eccentric Jupiters is on, high-e or not high-e, we will find out soon.

9. Book 'em Dano: Fingerprints of Planet Formation

Signatures of the process of planet formation are likely imprinted on the host star's properties. My research focuses on detecting these signatures using chemical composition analysis. My collaborators and I have found that our Sun is missing a small amount of "rocky" elements relative to stars which are otherwise very similar to it, probably because they were left behind in the terrestrial planets of the solar system when it formed. We also studied the binary system 16 Cyg. Instead of having the exact same composition, the secondary star, 16 Cyg B, is slightly metal-poor relative to 16 Cyg A. Interestingly, 16 Cyg B is known to host a gas giant planet while no planets have yet been found around 16 Cyg A. When the planet around 16 Cyg B formed, it probably took away metals from the star, thus explaining its slightly lower metallicity. Our work opens up the possibility of using a relatively simple method for detecting and studying exoplanets, including Earth-like ones, as a complement to radial velocity and transit efforts.

For more on Ivan's work, please see: http://www.universetoday.com/87879/do-planets-rob-their-stars-of-metals/.

10. 50,000 Exo Fans Roll with EPO

In the last several months, ExEP E/PO estimates we have directly reached approximately 50,000 people across the country! This flurry of events closes out the school year for E/PO and will give us some time to prepare for the upcoming year! In March we visited the San Diego Science Festival at Petco Park, which had an overall attendance of 50,000. In April we participated in the USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington D.C, which had a whopping attendance of 150,000 people over three days! While in Washington, we also set up shop at the Astronomy Night on the Mall and spoke with stargazers about exoplanets. May found us at the Arroyo Seco Junior High School in Santa Clarita, CA with our program staff putting on an Exploring New Worlds Astronomy Day for 800 7th and 8th graders. In one very busy week in June we found ourselves at JPL's Open House in Pasadena (38,000 visitors), the American Astronomical Society meeting in Anchorage (1,200 registered attendees), and an AAS event for local students in Anchorage (125 students and chaperones). We've had a great time at all of these events, and while we're happy for a little break, we are excited about events to come and hope we can involve lots of you in the future!

11. ExoToon: Mischevious Microlensing

Think you can do better than our Exoplanet cartoon? We're accepting contributions! Please send your cartoons in pdf format, to newworldsnews@ipac.caltech.edu. The best submission received by September 1, 2012 will feature in the next edition of the Newsletter. Selection will be done by a very non-expert committee, comprised of anyone within 30ft of the editor's office on September 2. By submitting your work, you are giving us permission to use your cartoon (with credits) for any future edition of the NASA New Worlds News Newsletter. Please remember that, once emailed out to the mailing list, we have no control over what anyone else chooses to do with your work.

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