NASA Exoplanet Science Institute Headlines

Dust Disk Found Around Massive Star

Sagan Exoplanet Fellow Stefan Kraus, of the University of Michigan, is the lead author of a Nature article that describes the discovery of a massive disk of dust and gas around a giant young star. These disks have been found around much smaller stars and this discovery suggests that much larger stars form in the same way. The star is about 20x the mass of our Sun and the discovery opens up the possibility that planets may form around these more massive stars. Read the press release here.

Zooming-In On Infant Planetary Systems

Using a new mode of the Keck Interferometer, astronomers have probed the infall and outflow of material in a proto-planetary disk within 0.1 AU of the central star. Read the press release here.

New Exoplanets Discovered by CoRoT!

CoRoT, a space telescope operated by the French space agency CNES, has announced the discovery of six new exoplanets and one brown dwarf. The planets, initially detected using the space telescope, are also studied with ground-based instruments to further characterize the exoplanet properties. For these new discoveries, observations made by Dr. Michael Endl of UT Austin and his team using NASA Keck time, administered by NExScI, contributed to the characterization of four of the new exoplanets. NStED is the US portal for public CoRoT data.

Second smallest exoplanet to date discovered at Keck

Observations with the HIRES instrument at Keck Observatory have detected an extrasolar planet 4 times the mass of Earth. The study, led by Andrew Howard of UC Berkeley, included data taken as part of the NASA Eta Earth Key Project. Read the full press release here.

2010-2011 IPAC/NExScI Visiting Graduate Student Program

Application deadline extended until July 23, 2010! Under this program graduate students from outside of Caltech work with an IPAC/NExScI scientist for 6-months (starting in Fall 2010). Click here for application instructions and possible research projects.

Sagan Summer Workshop

On-line registration and agenda available! The 2010 Sagan Summer Workshop will be held July 26-30 and will focus on Stars as Homes for Habitable Planetary Systems. Click here for more information.

2010B NASA Keck Observing Proposals

The call for 2010B proposals is closed. The call for 2011A observing semester proposals will be available in Aug. 2010 with a due date of Sept. 16, 2011.

NExScI 101

For an introduction to NExScI's managed and supported data tools, archives, telescope time, meetings, and fellowships click here. This PDF file contains updated versions of NExScI brochures and handouts prepared for the May 2010 AAS meeting.

2010 Sagan Exoplanet Fellows Announced

NExScI is pleased to announce the 2010 Sagan Postdoctoral Fellows. Click here for more information on the Sagan Postdoctoral Fellowship program.

NStED Access to Periodgram Service, Public Kepler Data and HATNet Survey Data

NExScI is pleased to announce a significant update to the NASA Star and Exoplanet Database (NStED). Each of the 210,000+ public Kepler light curves are integrated with the newly-released NStED periodogram service. The periodogram service employs 3 different algorithms and generates a periodicity rank for each tested frequency, and a phased light curve for each peak in the periodogram. The periodogram parameters are adjustable through a web-based interface allowing users to refine the periodicity search. Kepler data are searchable at NStED from here.
NStED provides a portal to data from the Hungarian-made Automated Telescope Network (HATNet) project. The initial release includes > 5000 lightcurves of variable stars detected by the HATNet project from 72 HATNet fields with declinations between +15 degrees and +52 degrees. The survey covers approximately 4000 square degrees, or roughly 10% of the sky. The HATNet data are available here
Click here for the general portal to the NStED exoplanet and stellar data.

KOA Releases
NIRSPEC Data

The Keck Observatory Archive (KOA) now includes more than 900 nights of data acquired using the Keck Near InfraRed echelle SPECtrograph (NIRSPEC) instrument between 2000 and 2010. Click here to access the data.

Workshop on Astronomy of Exoplanets with Precise Radial Velocities

This August 2010 workshop at Penn State will be devoted to a discussion of the current capabilities and a future potential of the radial velocity (RV) technique to discover and characterize exoplanets. The workshop is sponsored by NExScI, the Penn State Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds, and the Penn State Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics.