[Baps] Peter McCullough seminar at BU, Monday 8 Feb, 4pm

[Paul Withers]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Announce] IAR Seminar
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 14:26:29 -0500 (EST)
From: Xiomara Forbez <xio at bu.edu>
Reply-To: xio at bu.edu
To: announce at skynet.bu.edu

Hi everyone!
    Here's the info for the next seminar!

           Astrophysics Seminar
         Monday, February 8, 2010
     Refreshments at 3:45pm in CAS500
      Talk begins at 4:00pm in CAS502


      Peter McCullough (CfA & STScI)

  "Discovery and Characterization of Transiting
            Extrasolar Planets"



Abstract:
         "In the past decade, one of the fastest
growing fields of astronomy has been the discovery
and characterization of planets that pass in front
of (or "transit") their host stars. From telescopes
in backyards to ones in space, observations of our
"XO Project" and many others around the globe are
contributing to this burgeoning field of inquiry
(e.g. Garcia-Melendo & McCullough (2009) and others'
discovery of the transit of the 111-day-period
HD 80606b). I will review highlights from some
recent programs that I have had a role in, using
the HST, SST, and WIYN telescopes. In particular,
time series photometry of high precision with the
Spitzer IRAC instrument have challenged the prevailing
hypothesis for the formation of hot stratospheres
of such planets (XO-1b, XO-2b, and XO3-b; Machalek
et al. 2008, 2009, 2010). Ground-based time-series
photometry with a precision of 200 ppm per minute,
as demonstrated on XO-2 by Burke et al. with the
WIYN 3.5-m, show promise for discovering transits
of super-Earths discovered by radial velocities.
Time series of spectrophotometry with  Hubble's
NICMOS instrument have provided initial glimpses
to the atomic and molecular content of transiting
planets' atmospheres (HD 189733b, Swain et al. 2008;
XO-1b, Tinetti et al. 2010). Prior to the May 2009
servicing mission of HST, we used one of HST's fine
guidance sensors, FGS-2r, as a photometer to observe
the transiting planet host star HD 17156 for ten
straight days with a precision of 120 ppm per minute.
We derived the mean density of the star by two
independent methods, the transit technique (Nutzman
et al 2010) and asteroseismology (Gilliland et al.
2010), and find they agree, thereby validating the
two methods.  I will also discuss some likely future
developments enabled by precise observations from space
(Kepler, Hubble, Spitzer) and the ground."





-- 
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Paul Withers                            Center for Space Physics
Office  +1 617 353 1531                 Boston University
Fax     +1 617 353 6463                 725 Commonwealth Avenue
Email   withers at bu.edu                  Boston MA 02215, USA
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