ASTP 789, Exoplanets: Spring 2018

Course material can be found online at

• http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/extrasol/extrasol.html

Outline for the course, class schedule, etc.

Syllabus and reading assignments (PDF)

How to improve for next time

Lectures. The list below serves a general guide to the topics and their sequence, but is not definitive.

• Week 1, Day A: Introduction to exoplanets
• Week 1, Day B: Investigating exoplanet databases
• Week 2, Day A: Census of exoplanets
• Week 2, Day B: Physical properties of known exoplanets
  
  Please read Statistical Distribution of Exoplanets, Section 3, in Exoplanets (ed. Seager) before coming to class.
• Week 3, Day A: Finding exoplanets by radial velocity variations
  
  Please read Radial Velocity Techniques for Exoplanets in Exoplanets (ed. Seager) before coming to class. Pay special attention to sections 1, 2.4, 2.5, 3.1-3.3, 3.6-3.7.
• Week 3, Day B: Finding exoplanets by radial velocity variations (II)
• Week 4, Day A: Finding exoplanets by transits
  
  Please read Exoplanet Transits and Occultations in Exoplanets (ed. Seager) before coming to class. Pay special attention to sections 1, 2, and 4.
• Week 4, Day B: What can we learn from transits?
  
  Please read Exoplanet Transits and Occultations in Exoplanets (ed. Seager) before coming to class. Pay special attention to sections 3 and 5.
• Week 5, Day A: Spectroscopy of exoplanet atmospheres
  
  Please read Exoplanet Transits and Occultations in Exoplanets (ed. Seager) Section 4. Another good resource is Observational Techniques With Transiting Exoplanetary Atmospheres by David Sing.
• Week 5, Day B: The Rossiter-McLaughlin effect
  
  Please read Exoplanet Transits and Occultations in Exoplanets (ed. Seager) Section 5.
• Week 6, Day A: Finding planets via microlensing
• Week 6, Day B: Review of astrometry
• Week 7, Day A: Finding planets via astrometry (Gaia!)
• Week 7, Day B: Exoplanets in the news: student-led discussions
  • Bublitz: exocartographer: A Bayesian Framework for Mapping Exoplanets in Reflected Light
  • Wilson: The Pan-Pacific Planet Search VII: The most eccentric planet orbiting a giant star
    See also An Eccentric Planet Skims a Giant Star
  • Rose: The California-Kepler Survey V. Peas in a Pod: Planets in a Kepler Multi-planet System are Similar in Size and Regularly Spaced
    See also Earth Resides in Oddball Solar System, Alien Worlds Show
  • Dickson-Vandervelde: Detecting transit signatures of exoplanetary rings using SOAP3.0
  • Richmond: Direct Multipixel Imaging and Spectroscopy of an Exoplanet with a Solar Gravity Lens Mission
• Week 8, Day A: Star and disk formation (I)
• Week 8, Day B: Star and disk formation (II)

Spring break

• Week 9, Day A: Protoplanetary disks and their evolution (I)
  
  But first, discussion of posters
• Week 9, Day B: Protoplanetary disks and their evolution (II)
• Week 10, Day A: Planet formation I
• Week 10, Day B: Planet formation II

• Week 11, Day A: Planet formation III
  But first, discussion of posters and days 11B and 13A
• Week 11, Day B: Planet migration
• Week 12, Day A: Finding exoplanets by direct imaging
  
  But first, news from a Gaia Newsletter
• Week 12, Day B: Using adaptive optics to find exoplanets
• Week 13, Day A: Searches: the past
• Week 13, Day B: Searches: the future
• Week 14, Day A: Exoplanets in the news (instructor-led discussion)
• Week 14, Day B: Student presentations and poster viewing
  
  Also, day of a quick little search for TW Hya's friends in the Gaia DR2 archive.
You can print posters using the COS Poster Printer. Please read their guidelines for posters carefully, and follow all the rules. In particular, note Use of solid backgrounds or images as backgrounds is discouraged.

Homework sets

1. Statistics of exoplanets and finding the period due Thursday, Jan 25, at 2:00 PM.
   • Answers to Homework 1
2. Radial Velocity techniques due Thursday, Feb 8, at 2:00 PM.
   • Answers to Homework 2
3. Detecting planets via transits
   Due Tuesday, Feb 20, at 2:00 PM.
   
4. Planets in the HR 8799 (PDF)
   First cut due in class on Thursday, Mar 27.
   Paper is due Tuesday, Apr 3.
   You may find it useful to read Skemer et al., ApJ 792, 17 (2014). You may also like to look at the orbital motions of the planets in Maire et al., astro-ph 1412.6989.
5. The minimum mass solar nebula (PDF)
   Due: Tues, Apr 24, in class. This HW is optional: if submitted, its score will replace the score of a homework assignment with a lower score.

Some resources for your final poster project:

• A blog with examples of good posters, with a good bit of discussion
• Designing conference posters has LOTS of words; you might want to skip down near the bottom, where there are more pictures.
• Scientific Posters thanks to the Leonhard Center at Penn State.
• An award-winning poster on exoplanets! Thanks to Ming Zhao and Jason Wright.
• Chambliss Award-winning posters from recent AAS meetings:
  • Wanda Feng's poster from June 2016
  • Debby Tran's poster from June 2016
• Posters about exoplanets made by students at the University of Tokyo for an earlier version of this class:
  • See students' posters here ...

For more information:

There are many, many sources for information about exoplanets. Below are just a few that we may visit frequently during the course.

• Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia
• NASA's Exoplanet Archive at IPAC
• Exoplanets.org site
• Kepler mission science site
• Extrasolar planet blog courtesy of Greg Laughlin.

Have too much time on your hands?

• David Weintraub argues that Ceres and Pluto should be planets

This page maintained by Michael Richmond. Last modified Jan 16, 2018.