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Nutzman, Philip

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Nutzman

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Philip

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Nutzman, Philip

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2009 - 200912010 - 20141

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Author's Publications: search.filters.isAuthorOfPublication.51c0c04c-ee8e-47a3-8e1e-efcd75a36b7a

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    The MEarth-North and MEarth-South transit surveys: searching for habitable super-Earth exoplanets around nearby M-dwarfs
    (2014) Irwin, Jonathan; Berta-Thompson, Zachory; Charbonneau, David; Dittmann, Jason Adam; Falco, Emilio; Newton, Elisabeth R; Nutzman, Philip
    Detection and characterization of potentially habitable Earthsize extrasolar planets is one of the major goals of contemporary astronomy. By applying the transit method to very low-mass M-dwarfs, it is possible to find these planets from the ground with present-day instrumentation and observational techniques. The MEarth project is one such survey with stations in both hemispheres: MEarth-North at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory, Mount Hopkins, Arizona, and MEarth-South at Cerro Tololo InterAmerican Observatory, Chile. We present an update on recent results of this survey, for planet occurrence rates, and interesting stellar astrophysics, for which our sample of 3000 nearby mid-to-late M-dwarfs has been very fruitful. All light curves gathered during the survey are made publicly available after one year, and we describe how to access and use these data.
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    A Super-Earth Transiting a Nearby Low-Mass Star
    (Nature Publishing Group, 2009) Charbonneau, David; Berta, Zachory; Irwin, Jonathan; Burke, Christopher J.; Nutzman, Philip; Buchhave, Lars A.; Lovis, Christophe; Bonfils, Xavier; Latham, David; Udry, Stéphane; Murray-Clay, Ruth; Holman, Matthew; Falco, Emilio E.; Winn, Joshua N.; Queloz, Didier; Pepe, Francesco; Mayor, Michel; Delfosse, Xavier; Forveille, Thierry
    A decade ago, the detection of the first transiting extrasolar planet provided a direct constraint on its composition and opened the door to spectroscopic investigations of extrasolar planetary atmospheres. Because such characterization studies are feasible only for transiting systems that are both nearby and for which the planet-to-star radius ratio is relatively large, nearby small stars have been surveyed intensively. Doppler studies and microlensing have uncovered a population of planets with minimum masses of 1.9–10 times the Earth’s mass (Mcircle plus), called super-Earths. The first constraint on the bulk composition of this novel class of planets was afforded by CoRoT-7b , but the distance and size of its star preclude atmospheric studies in the foreseeable future. Here we report observations of the transiting planet GJ 1214b, which has a mass of 6.55Mcircle plus and a radius 2.68 times Earth’s radius (Rcircle plus), indicating that it is intermediate in stature between Earth and the ice giants of the Solar System. We find that the planetary mass and radius are consistent with a composition of primarily water enshrouded by a hydrogen–helium envelope that is only 0.05% of the mass of the planet. The atmosphere is probably escaping hydrodynamically, indicating that it has undergone significant evolution during its history. The star is small and only 13 parsecs away, so the planetary atmosphere is amenable to study with current observatories.