Discovery and characterization of circumbinary planets from Kepler
Abstract
Over the course of the past three years, the peerless-quality data from the NASA Kepler mission has allowed us to confirm, for the first time, the existence of eight circumbinary planets. This dissertation talk presents my contribution to the field in terms of discovery and characterization of three circumbinary planetary systems (Kepler-47, Kepler-64, KIC12351927). Here I describe the unique observational signatures of circumbinary planets, the detection method and analysis tools we developed to characterize the systems, and the theoretical implications of our discoveries. The results of my work deliver important new insight into the nature of these remarkable objects and are paramount for our understanding of a) how planets form and evolve in multiple stellar systems and b) what type of binary stars can support circumbinary planets. Adding new members to the still small family of circumbinary planets has direct relevance for estimating the planetary census in the Galaxy, and for the extension of the concept of habitability to binary stars.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #223
- Pub Date:
- January 2014
- Bibcode:
- 2014AAS...22313203K