Start year
2013
Organizational Unit
Organizing institutions
Grants related:
General
Description
The search for life in the universe has been driven by recent discoveries of planets around other stars (known as exoplanets), becoming one of the most active fields in modern astrophysics. The growing number of new exoplanets discovered in recent years and the recent advance on the study of their atmospheres are not only providing new valuable information about its physical properties, but also allowing to constrain the properties of the Solar system's planets within a more global context. The field is approaching to the important discovery of the first potentially habitable planets and encouraging more detailed studies of them. With the launching of upcoming related satellites like JWST, CHEOPS, TESS, ARIEL and PLATO, the exoplanets field faces a bright future.
It is for this reason that this field is aid of, and at the same time promotes, the development of increasingly sensitive and stable instrumentation for both, ground-based telescopes and space missions. Our group is particularly prepared for these two fronts. On the one hand, during the last years we have developed observational and reduction techniques of exoplanet transits data for the ORM telescopes, ours being one of the most productive groups in the exploitation of GTC. On the other hand, all ESA space missions (present and future) related to exoplanets have one or more components of the project as CoIs. Within the frame of this project, we intend that IAC researchers maintain an advantageous position regarding the operation of OSIRIS and CanariCam, first light
GTC's instruments, and participate in the construction, commissioning and operation of new instruments such as the high resolution optical spectrograph HORUS at GTC. The exploitation of the photometry and spectroscopy of transits with LIRIS at WHT is also one of our principal interests, especially in preparation for the installation in 2015 of EMIR on the GTC .
To summarize, the project "Exoplanets and Astrobiology" will focus on these four action lines:
1) The characterization of atmospheric and physical properties of exoplanets (GTC, WHT, ARIEL, HARPSN, CARMENES, ESPRESSO, etc. ..)
2) The search and confirmation of exoplanets by transits techniques (CoRoT, Kepler, K2, CHEOPS, XO, LCOGT, W FC, DISH, etc. ..)
3) The search and confirmation of exoplanet by radial velocity techniques (HARPSN, HORUS, LCOGT, SONG, CARMENES)
4) Astrobiology
Members
Principal investigator
Enric
Pallé Bago
Project staff
Hans Jörg
Deeg Deeg
Nicolas Cédric
Lodieu
Javier Andrés
Licandro Goldaracena
Víctor Javier
Sánchez Bejar
Juan Antonio
Belmonte Avilés
Roi
Alonso Sobrino
Grzegorz
Nowak
Patricia
Chinchilla Gallego
A. L. Cabrera Lavers
Felipe Andrés
Murgas Alcaino
Hannu
Parviainen
Collaborators
Dr.
Paulo Miles Paez
Dr.
Maria Rosa Zapatero Osorio
Dr.
M. Mas Hesse
Dr.
M. Deleuil
Dr.
D. Gandolfi
Dr.
M. Fridlund
Dr.
L. Doyle
Dr.
H. Rauer
Dr.
J. Cabrera
Dr.
Sz. Csizmadia
Dr.
D. Pollacco
Dr.
A. Hatzes
Dr.
T. Mazeh
Dr.
T. Boyajian
Dr.
B. Tingley
Dr.
D. Martin
Dr.
A Triaud
Dr.
D. Fabrycky
Antonio Cabrera Lavers
Results
- Detection of He in the atmosphere of an exoplanet from the ground, published in Science
- Detection of a super-earth around Barnard star, published in Nature
- Detection of the first TESS planets, with several papers of high relevance
- Discovery of Na and Halpha features in the spectrum of KELT-20b with TNG
- Publication of the Handbook of Exoplanets, the most extensive work of reference in the field of exoplanets. The Handbook was edited by members of our group, and includes contributions by about 300 experts worldwide, including 12 members of IAC.
Scientific activity
Related publications
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The geometric albedo of the hot Jupiter HD 189733b measured with CHEOPSContext. Measurements of the occultation of an exoplanet at visible wavelengths allow us to determine the reflective properties of a planetary atmosphere. The observed occultation depth can be translated into a geometric albedo. This in turn aids in characterising the structure and composition of an atmosphere by providing additional information onKrenn, A. F. et al.
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A puffy polar planet. The low density, hot Jupiter TOI-640 b is on a polar orbitTOI-640 b is a hot, puffy Jupiter with a mass of 0.57 ± 0.02 M J and radius of 1.72 ± 0.05 R J, orbiting a slightly evolved F-type star with a separation of 6.33 −0.06 +0.07 R ⋆. Through spectroscopic in-transit observations made with the HARPS spectrograph, we measured the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect, analysing both in-transit radial velocities andKnudstrup, Emil et al.
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Glancing through the debris disk: Photometric analysis of DE Boo with CHEOPSAims: DE Boo is a unique system, with an edge-on view through the debris disk around the star. The disk, which is analogous to the Kuiper belt in the Solar System, was reported to extend from 74 to 84 AU from the central star. The high photometric precision of the Characterising Exoplanet Satellite (CHEOPS) provided an exceptional opportunity toRando, N. et al.
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A full transit of v<SUP>2</SUP> Lupi d and the search for an exomoon in its Hill sphere with CHEOPSThe planetary system around the naked-eye star v 2 Lupi (HD 136352; TOI-2011) is composed of three exoplanets with masses of 4.7, 11.2, and 8.6 Earth masses (M ⊕). The TESS and CHEOPS missions revealed that all three planets are transiting and have radii straddling the radius gap separating volatile-rich and volatile-poor super-earths. Only aBarrado, D. et al.
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TOI-3235 b: A Transiting Giant Planet around an M4 Dwarf StarWe present the discovery of TOI-3235 b, a short-period Jupiter orbiting an M dwarf with a stellar mass close to the critical mass at which stars transition from partially to fully convective. TOI-3235 b was first identified as a candidate from TESS photometry and confirmed with radial velocities from ESPRESSO and ground-based photometry fromWinn, Joshua N. et al.
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Dynamical masses of two young transiting sub-Neptunes orbiting HD 63433Context. Although the number of exoplanets reported in the literature exceeds 5000 so far, only a few dozen of them are young planets (≤900 Myr). However, a complete characterization of these young planets is key to understanding the current properties of the entire population. Hence, it is necessary to constrain the planetary formation processesZechmeister, M. et al.
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TOI-836: A super-Earth and mini-Neptune transiting a nearby K-dwarfWe present the discovery of two exoplanets transiting TOI-836 (TIC 440887364) using data from TESS Sector 11 and Sector 38. TOI-836 is a bright (T = 8.5 mag), high proper motion (~200 mas yr -1), low metallicity ([Fe/H]≈-0.28) K-dwarf with a mass of 0.68 ± 0.05 M ⊙ and a radius of 0.67 ± 0.01 R ⊙. We obtain photometric follow-up observations with aHawthorn, Faith et al.
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Temporal albedo variability in the phase curve of KELT-1bThe dayside brightness spectrum of a highly irradiated transiting brown dwarf KELT-1b is challenging to explain based on current brown dwarf atmosphere models. The spectrum has been measured from observations spanning ten years and covering high-precision secondary eclipses and phase curves from space in blue-visible (CHaracterising ExOPlanetParviainen, H.
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TOI-1055 b: Neptunian planet characterised with HARPS, TESS, and CHEOPSContext. TOI-1055 is a Sun-like star known to host a transiting Neptune-sized planet on a 17.5-day orbit (TOI-1055 b). Radial velocity (RV) analyses carried out by two independent groups using nearly the same set of HARPS spectra have provided measurements of planetary masses that differ by ∼2σ. Aims: Our aim in this work is to solve theBonfanti, A. et al.
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Hint of an exocomet transit in the CHEOPS light curve of HD 172555HD 172555 is a young (~20 Myr) A7V star surrounded by a 10 au wide debris disk suspected to be replenished partly by collisions between large planetesimals. Small evaporating transiting bodies, that is exocomets, have also been detected in this system by spectroscopy. After β Pictoris, this is another example of a system possibly witnessing a phaseKiefer, F. et al.
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The CARMENES search for exoplanets around M dwarfs. A long-period planet around GJ 1151 measured with CARMENES and HARPS-N dataContext. Detecting a planetary companion in a short-period orbit through radio emission from the interaction with its host star is a new prospect in exoplanet science. Recently, a tantalising signal was found close to the low-mass stellar system GJ 1151 using LOFAR observations. Aims: We studied spectroscopic time-series data of GJ 1151 in order toBlanco-Pozo, J. et al.
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Early Release Science of the exoplanet WASP-39b with JWST NIRCamMeasuring the metallicity and carbon-to-oxygen (C/O) ratio in exoplanet atmospheres is a fundamental step towards constraining the dominant chemical processes at work and, if in equilibrium, revealing planet formation histories. Transmission spectroscopy (for example, refs. 1,2) provides the necessary means by constraining the abundances of oxygen-Ahrer, Eva-Maria et al.
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Early Release Science of the exoplanet WASP-39b with JWST NIRSpec G395HMeasuring the abundances of carbon and oxygen in exoplanet atmospheres is considered a crucial avenue for unlocking the formation and evolution of exoplanetary systems 1,2. Access to the chemical inventory of an exoplanet requires high-precision observations, often inferred from individual molecular detections with low-resolution space-based 3-5Alderson, Lili et al.
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Early Release Science of the exoplanet WASP-39b with JWST NIRISSThe Saturn-mass exoplanet WASP-39b has been the subject of extensive efforts to determine its atmospheric properties using transmission spectroscopy 1-4. However, these efforts have been hampered by modelling degeneracies between composition and cloud properties that are caused by limited data quality 5-9. Here we present the transmission spectrumFeinstein, Adina D. et al.
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Early Release Science of the exoplanet WASP-39b with JWST NIRSpec PRISMTransmission spectroscopy 1-3 of exoplanets has revealed signatures of water vapour, aerosols and alkali metals in a few dozen exoplanet atmospheres 4,5. However, these previous inferences with the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes were hindered by the observations' relatively narrow wavelength range and spectral resolving power, which precludedRustamkulov, Z. et al.
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Characterization of a Set of Small Planets with TESS and CHEOPS and an Analysis of Photometric PerformanceThe radius valley carries implications for how the atmospheres of small planets form and evolve, but this feature is visible only with highly precise characterizations of many small planets. We present the characterization of nine planets and one planet candidate with both NASA TESS and ESA CHEOPS observations, which adds to the overall populationOddo, Dominic et al.
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An Earth-sized Planet around an M5 Dwarf Star at 22 pcWe report on the discovery of an Earth-sized transiting planet (R p = 1.015 ± 0.051 R ⊕) in a P = 4.02 day orbit around K2-415 (EPIC 211414619), an M5V star at 22 pc. The planet candidate was first identified by analyzing the light-curve data obtained by the K2 mission, and it is here shown to exist in the most recent data from TESS. Combining theNarita, Norio et al.
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The CARMENES search for exoplanets around M dwarfs. Guaranteed time observations Data Release 1 (2016-2020)Context. The CARMENES instrument, installed at the 3.5 m telescope of the Calar Alto Observatory in Almería, Spain, was conceived to deliver high-accuracy radial velocity (RV) measurements with long-term stability to search for temperate rocky planets around a sample of nearby cool stars. Moreover, the broad wavelength coverage was designed toRibas, I. et al.
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The CARMENES search for exoplanets around M dwarfs. Variability on long timescales as seen in chromospheric indicatorsIt is clearly established that the Sun has an 11-yr cycle that is caused by its internal magnetic field. Such a cycle is also observed in a sample of M dwarfs. In the framework of exoplanet detection or atmospheric characterisation of exoplanets, the activity status of the host star plays a crucial role, and inactive states are preferable for suchFuhrmeister, B. et al.
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The CARMENES search for exoplanets around M dwarfs. Wolf 1069 b: Earth-mass planet in the habitable zone of a nearby, very low-mass starWe present the discovery of an Earth-mass planet (M b sin i = 1.26 ± 0.21 M ⊕) on a 15.6 d orbit of a relatively nearby (d ~ 9.6 pc) and low-mass (0.167 ± 0.011 M ⊙) M5.0 V star, Wolf 1069. Sitting at a separation of 0.0672 ± 0.0014 au away from the host star puts Wolf 1069 b in the habitable zone (HZ), receiving an incident flux of S = 0.652 ± 0Kossakowski, D. et al.
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