Exoplanet Group News

New HATS-3b and WASP-79 Results at IAU Symposium 299 in Victoria, BC.

Thu, 6 Jun 2013 02:39:03 +1000

Papers on the new transit planet HATS-3b (Bayliss et al.) and measuring the Rossiter-Mclaughlin effect in WASP-79 (Addison et al.) were submitted to ApJ and amongst the papers presented by Exoplanetary Science at UNSW members at IAU Symposium 299 in Victoria, BC.
Other posters presented include
• Horner et al. - Dynamical Constraints on Multi-Planet Exoplanetary Systems
• Salter et al. - Dynamical Constraints on Multi-Planet Exoplanetary Systems
• Addison et al. - Recently Discovered Exoplanetary System in Spin-Orbit Misalignment from Rossiter-McLauglin Measurements
• Wittenmyer et al. - Forever alone? Testing single eccentric planetary systems for multiple companions

Periodic variations in the tau Ceti velocities

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 02:51:01 +1100

• "Periodic variations in the tau Ceti velocities" (A&A)  - Paper now available on astro-ph. - UNSW Press Release - UK Press Release - UK Press Release Materials & Images Coverage - New Scientist - Space.com - The Guardian - Fairfax - ABC Online - ABC PM (Cached audio) - The Australian, Daily Telegraph - COSMOS - AFP

UNSW scores at Scientist of the Year awards

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 08:32:09 +1100

Five UNSW researchers – including Exoplanetary Science at UNSW's Chris Tinney - have been recognised for excellence across three categories in this year’s New South Wales Scientist of the Year awards, announced in a ceremony at Government House last night.

“All of this year’s category winners are among our State’s leading lights in areas such as environmental sciences, biomedicine, plant and animal research, engineering and ICT, emerging research and teaching,” said the NSW Chief Scientist and Engineer, Professor Mary O’Kane. “Each winner is making a crucial contribution to the future of NSW.”

The award for Excellence in Mathematics, Earth Sciences, Chemistry and Physics was jointly given to:
Professor Matthew England – who is an ARC Laureate Fellow and Deputy Director of the UNSW Climate Change Research Centre. His main research area is physical oceanography.
Professor Chris Tinney – is a Professorial Fellow and astronomer in the School of Physics and heads the Exoplanetary Science at UNSW group, within the Australian Centre for Astrobiology.

The award for Excellence in Biological Sciences (Plant, Agriculture and Environment) was also a tie, between:
Dr Angela Moles – is an Associate Professor in the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences (BEES). She heads the Big Ecology Lab
Associate Professor Emma Johnston is a marine scientist in BEES and the Sydney Institute of Marine Science. She studies human disturbance of marine communities.

The award for Excellence in Engineering and Information and Communications Technologies:
Scientia Professor Andrew Dzurak, of the Faculty of Engineering, is a team leader at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology.

The overall winner of the NSW Scientist of the Year was University of Newcastle Laureate Professor John Aitken, a reproductive biology researcher whose world-leading work could provide revolutionary new chemically based contraceptives that also protect against sexually transmitted diseases.

The Deputy Premier and Minister for Regional Infrastructure and Services, Mr Andrew Stoner, said the NSW Government recognised the importance of innovation and research in creating smarter, more productive industries that drove economic growth and generated jobs for the State.

A new planet that is the most likely candidate yet identified to be able to host liquid water has been found by an international team of astronomers.

Fri, 3 Feb 2012 02:00:37 +1100

The planet, GJ 667Cc, lies only 22 light-years from Earth. It circles a relatively cool star (GJ667C), has an orbital period of 28.15 days and a minimum mass of 4.5 times that of Earth, according to a report of the discovery to be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The new planet receives about 90% of the light that the Earth receives from the Sun. But most of this incoming light is in the infrared, and so more of it will be absorbed by the planet, says Professor Chris Tinney of the University of NSW, a member of the research team. Other UNSW team members include Dr Jeremy Bailey and Dr Rob Wittenmyer.

“This means that overall the planet absorbs about the same amount of energy from its star as the Earth absorbs from the Sun: so that would give the planet the right temperature, if it has a rocky surface and a wet atmosphere, to host liquid water,” says Professor Tinney. “And liquid water is seen as an essential pre-condition for the development of life.”

The planet orbits a star called GJ 667C, which is a member of a triple-star system and orbits a distant pair of brighter, orange K-dwarfs (GJ 667A and B).

“This discovery shows that habitable planets could form in a greater variety of environments than we previously considered,” said Dr Simon O’Toole of the Australian Astronomical Observatory, another team member.

The planet was discovered using the “Doppler wobble” technique, which detects the slight movements of a star as its orbiting planets tug it to and fro in space.

Star GJ 667C had previously been observed to have a “super-Earth” (GJ 667Cb) with an orbital period of 7.2 days, although this finding was never published. But that orbit is too tight, and thus that planet is too hot, to support life.

GJ 667C might also host a distant gas-giant planet, and an additional super-Earth with an orbital period of 75 days, but more observations are needed to confirm this.

Data that led to the finding came from the European Southern Observatory’s 3.6m telescope; one of the two 6.5-m Magellan telescopes of the Carnegie Observatories; and one of the twin 10-m Keck telescopes operated by the University of California and the California Institute of Technology.

Dr Brad Carter of the University of Southern Queensland was one of several astronomers who made observations for the project—in his case, using Magellan in Chile.

This project was part of a larger program to find rocky planets and super-Earths.
The research team was led by Dr Guillem Anglada-Escudé (now University of Göttingen, but at the Carnegie Institution for Science at the time of the observations) and Dr Paul Butler (Carnegie Institution for Science). It also includes researchers from Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, University of California’s Lick Observatory, the Institute for Astronomy & NASA Astrobiology Institute at University of Hawaii-Monoa, the University of Hertfordshire, and the Universidad de Chile.

Media contacts in Australia:
Chris Tinney (+61) 2 9385 5168 or 0416 092 117   c.tinney@unsw.edu.au and www.phys.unsw.edu/~cgt
UNSW Faculty of Science media liaison Bob Beale 0411 705 435   bbeale@unsw,edu.au

UNSW Press Release
• at the UNSW Faculty of Science Press Office

Related International Press Releases
• Carnegie Institution
• Keck Observatory
• University of Hawaii

Supporting material
• Copies of the accepted paper for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, is available at http://arxiv.org/abs/1202.0446

Graphical Material
• GJ667Cc.png : artistic conception of the GJ667C system with planet c in the foreground. Even though it is an artists conception, the size of the star and the binary are on the right scale, color and brightness.
• GJ667C_TwoPlanets.png : artistic conception of the two planets we report here : b and c. Planet c is the one that lies in the habitable zone of the star. Planet b is too hot to be habitable.
• GJ667C_TwoPlanets_withLabels.png : the same figure of the two planets now with labels.
• GJ667_vs_Sol.avi (movie) : Solar System compared to the two comfirmed planets b and c.
• GJ667_Constelation.png : Sky location of the GJ 667 system in the constelation of Scorpius. The system is a bit too faint to be seen by eye.

All the above images and video were created by G. Anglada using the free software Celestia (http://www.shatters.net/celestia/).

Two Super Science Fellows join UNSW Exoplanetary Science Group

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 16:50:18 +1100

Two ARC Super Science Fellows have now joined the Exoplanetary Science Groups at UNSW.

Dr Duncan Wright has started work on research projects using the CYCLOPS facility at the Anglo-Australian Telescope, including a new spectrograph-model-driven spectral extraction package.

Dr Graeme Salter has started work on research projects in the high-resolution imaging of exoplanets, using the Gemini NICI instrument and other facilities.

Welcome Duncan and Graeme!