[Baps] Fwd: Exoplanet colloquium: May 1st 4pm CfA/Phillips

[Sarah Stewart-Mukhopadhyay]

http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/events/colloquia/

 This Thursday, May 1st, Gaspar Bakos will present the CfA Colloquium pH
 Lecture at 4pm in the Phillips Auditorium (preceeded by tea at 3:30pm).

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 pH Lecture: Fishing for planets with HATNet

 Dr. Gaspar Bakos (CfA)

 Within planetary science, the first decade of the 21st century is arguably
 that of transiting extrasolar planets, standing on the shoulders of the
 very successful radial velocity searches. If we rewind our clocks just ten
 years, we had scarce information on exoplanets; their masses were
 incompletely known, and we had no information at all on their radii,
 chemical composition, or atmospheric characteristics; the related
 astrophysics was based mainly on theoretical speculation. The situation
 has changed dramatically, and by now we have a sample of forty transiting
 planets with most of the above properties well characterized. I will help
 the audience to glimpse the continuous excitement and surprises provided
 by the exponential boom in transit numbers. With more transiting planets
 definite relations and trends are emerging, but this field is still
 suffering from small number statistics. Thus a number of projects are
 searching for the elusive transit signatures. One of them, HATNet at the
 CfA, has contributed quite significantly through finding seven (or more?)
 planets. I will give some background information on HATNet, describe how
 we search for planets, and comment on some of our more interesting
 detections.