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Exoplanetary Scratchpad

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List of transiting exoplanets.

Transiting Exoplanets By Discovery Project[]

  • OGLE Planets - Planets discovered during one of the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiments which searches in the Galactic bulge.
  • TrES Planets - Planets found with the Trans-Atlantic Exoplanet Survey (TrES), an effort involving the "Sleuth" telescope at Caltech's Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, the Planet Search Survey Telescope (PSST) at Lowell Observatory near Flagstaff, Arizona, and the "STellar Astrophysics and Research on Exoplanets (Stare) telescope in the Canary Islands.
  • WASP Planets - Planets discovered during the UK-led SuperWASP (Wide Angle Search for Planets) program (see articles [1] [2]).
  • SWEEPS Planets - Planets detected by the SWEEPS Project (Sagittarius Window Eclipsing Extrasolar Planet Search), which scanned for transiting planets in the region of the Galactic Bulge. Because these stars tend to be so distant and faint, a precise measurement for the planets' mass and radius is not possible. Several unconfirmed planets detected by this survey are "Ultra Short Period Planets", which can only exist around small Red Dwarves (such as Sweeps 10). The names of the stars and planets are identical for these systems.
  • HAT-P Planets - Planets discovered by the Hungarian Automated Telescope, a network of six small robotic telescopes, four at Arizona's Wipple Observatory and two atop Hawaii's Mauna Kea.
  • CoRoT Planets - Planets discovered by the European COROT satelite, which is intended to be able to detect Earth-sized planets.
  • XO Planets - Planets detected with light data collected by the XO Telescope, which was made by Peter McCullough with commercialy available parts. Amateur and professional astronomers cooperate to find these planets.
  • Kepler Planets - Planets discovered by the Kepler satelite and those not confirmed (KOIs)

Discovered By Non-Transit Method[]

  • Gliese 436 System (2004) - AC+27°28217 is best known as Gliese 436. The second known red dwarf planetary system. Contains one of the first Neptunians discovered and a few potential planets. The star is about half the sun's mass. It is over 11 Billion years old and may be a part of the old disk of the Milky Way. Planet b temporarily later found to be the smallest exoplanet (about Uranus' diameter, though over 50% its mass) known to transit its host star and is currently the nearest (33 ly). Its temperature (712K) was measured to be higher than what it would be purely from radiation (520K), perhaps due to a greenhouse effect, somewhat higher than Venus. It was originally thought to have a layer of "hot ice", water solidified due to high pressures. It turned out that it was larger than thought and hot ice was not needed. It could still be a rocky super-Earth. It was later found to have a remarkably low levels of Methane and high levels of Carbon Monoxide for its 800K temperature. Possible explanations include Methane being changed into hydrocarbon polymers due to its star's ultraviolet radiation, CO being drafted upwards with winds, or observational defects. Later, due to lack of detection of chemical signatures through the backlit atmosphere, it was concluded that high altitude clouds, perhaps made of potassium chloride or zink sulphide dust, were blocking the detection. This could be the first detection of clouds of a Neptunian. An alternate theory is that the atmosphere is filled with heavy compounds, such as water, carbond dioxide, which would compress the atmosphere and make it difficult to detect. After detection of a huge comet-like tail of Hydrogen trailing and wrapping around its orbit led to the most recent theory that it lost its Hydrogen to uv radiation and was left with a Helium dominated atmosphere with plenty of CO instead of CH4. It's significant eccentricity suggests a possible neighboring planet. Planet c was announced to be the smallest known exoplanet (1.5 Earth's diameter), but was later retracted because variations in transit timing of the first planet did not occur and the proposed orbit would be unstable. It is still thought that a second planet of some kind is possible in the system. Candidate UCF-1.01 was detected by a student in the UCF's astronomy department using the Spitzer Space Telescope. It is about 2/3 Earth's diameter (smaller than all but one confirmed exoplanet), orbits around its star in 1.5 days, and at 1000F may be a lava world without an atmosphere. UCF-1.02 also may exist. Both are thought to be about 1/3 as massive as the Earth, but are too small to get their mass measured and thus too small to be confirmed with present technology.
  • HD 17156 System - Star system containing a planet discovered by dopplar spectrometry method and later found by amateurs to transit. At the time, it smashed the records for the furthest transiting planet (period of 21 d, 0.0523 to 0.26 AU) and most eccentric orbit. Its orbit was found to be well aligned with the rotation of its star. Its size has been measured better with the Hubble Telescope (3.8 MJ). A second, unconfirmed planet has also been proposed for this system.


Discovered by MEarth Project[]

Wikipedia Project Page

  • GJ 1214 System - A red dwarf system containing the first exoplanet discovered by the MEarth project, which seeks to detect transiting Earth-like planets around nearby red dwarves, and the second transiting super-Earth. The planet is the first of a new class of planets with low mass and low density. Atmospheric observations suggest it is not a terrestrial with an outgassed (mostly Hydrogen/Helium) atmosphere, nor a Neptune-like world (Hydrogen/Methane mix). Instead it would be a new class of water worlds, with a bulk of its mass made of water. The temperature is too hot for liquid water and not thought to have a solid surface, so it could be covered with hot ice (plasma water). Its featureless spectrum (the first Super Earth atmosphere ever studied) prompted further investigation by Hubble. No chemical fingerprints were detected in its atmosphere despite high sensitivity, leading to conclusive evidence that high altitude clouds were preventing any detection (ruling out the possibility that heavier elements in the atmosphere were compressing the atmosphere, making it hard to detect, which may be the case for other planets with no detected chemicals). These are the first clouds proven around a super-Earth. It may be the coolest transiting planet detected. Its close proximity (under 50 ly) assures promising future observation.

Unsorted Systems[]

  • HD 189733 System- A binary star in Velpulca (the "little fox") consisting of an Orange Dwarf star A and a Red Dwarf B (discovered shortly after planet Ab found and orbiting perpendicular to that planet's orbit and later detected in x-rays) orbiting 216 AU away. Planet Ab (the first nearby Very Hot Jupiter, originally thought to be inflated, is 13% larger and more massive than Jupiter) is the nearest transiting Hot Jupiter (62.9 ly). This is the first exoplanet to have its temperature mapped and was nicknamed Bull's Eye for its hot spot that is significantly offset from the starward pole. 5 years later, it later became the first world to have its thermal emissions mapped in both longtitude and latitude, confirming the hot spot was near the equator. Fast winds are thought to make the temperature of the eternal day and night sides nearly identical, which were later measured to be 2km/s when the planet became the first to have its wind and weather patterns mapped. It is also the first exoplanet for which scattered light in the upper atmosphere has been detected and the second exoplanet with water detected and first with Methane and then Carbon Dioxide detected. It later was the first exoplanet whose gasses were detected from Earth-based telescopes. It was also found to spin up its star and magnetically interact with it, causing stellar storms. Massive X-class solar flares blast off much of the planet's atmosphere and may render it undetectable. Hubble found that its atmosphere was a uniform blue haze. Blue was detected by determining which wavelengths were blocked during a transit. It was also found to rain molten glass, sideways, with 7000 km/hr winds and 1000C. It became the first exoplanet whose transit was detected in X-Rays, which revealed it had a very large extended outer atmosphere, which is losing material rapidly. The star is much more magnetically active for its age, possibly due to the planet's presence. There is speculation that it could have large planet-wide auroras. It's already-known mass was measured using an atmospheric pressure method to test its viability. By studying sodium spectra, it was determined that it gets hotter with altitude.
  • HD 209458 System - Has first discovered transiting planet which was nicknamed Osiris due to the (first detected) comet-like tail detected and the first exoplanet around a normal star to have its mass directly measured. Also the first Inflated Hot Jupiter found. The planet may be losing its outer atmosphere, or magnetism may prevent the ions from escaping. They detected water in its atmosphere (they had failed earlier), the first time this has been done for any exoplanet. 2nd Exoplanet with detected organic compounds; like HD 189733b, it has water and carbon dioxide, but it has a lot more Methane. Was one of 2 planets to have light directly taken and thus their temperatures read (over 1000K). Tracking carbon molecules with dopplar spectrometry caused it to be the first exoplanet detected to have winds, which are raging at 5,000 to 10,000 km/h. This is believed to cause hotspots to appear at terminators rather than at the star-ward facing point. Had one of the strongest water detection of the 5 exoplanets contrasted by Hubble in 2013, though still less intense than expected, probably due to dust clouds or a haze blocking its detection.
  • HD 149026 System - Ogma (HD 149026) is a yellow sub-giant star with the first known Saturn mass transiting planet, Smertrios. Also the first planet found with a dense core, leading credence to the core-accretion theory. Sometimes called a Super-Neptune, though it is not known if its core is rocky or icy. Also the first TEP discovered smaller than Jupiter. It was revealed to be as black as coal, twice as hot as any other known exoplanet, and hotter than some stars. One of the first 20 exoplanet systems allowed to be given common names by the IAU. The star is named after a Celtic god of eloquence, writing, and great physical strength, while the planet was named after a Gallic deity of war.
  • HD 80606 System - Multiple star system (also known as Struve 1341) with a planet, which had a higher period (111 days) than any other known transiting planet and highest eccentricty (Halley's comet-like, epistellar distances to almost Earth-like distance) prior to the release of Kepler data. It is the nearest transiting Super Jupiter (4 MJ, radius slightly less than 1 RJ, 190ly). Its length of day is 36 hours. Discovered in 2001, but found to transit in 2009. Planet is the first one for which changes in weather have been observed. Potassium was detected from the high wind regions of the exosphere. In 2010 it was found to be only one of the two out of all 79 known transiting exoplanetary systems that could not support a habitable Earth-like planet, since its elongated orbit would destabilize any such planets. Planet thought to be in the process of becoming a Hot Jupiter. Observations suggested that energy transferred during closest approach to star would take 10 Billion Years to cause the orbit to circularize, meaning this tidal migration method may not be the preferred one to form hot jupiters.
  • Lupus-TR-3 System - A typical hot jupiter somewhat less massive than Jupiter. Currently the faintest ground-based detected transiting planet.

For a list of properties for exoplanets discovered via transit, see the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia list.

See Also[]

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