Malcolm Fridlund just told me that the number of exoplanets detected by COROT is...going up!
The team started writing about ten new papers and a press event is predicted for the end of October, beggining of November.
What's coming from there?

Thanks ustrax!!!!!

Can hardly wait.

A great paper recently published is:

MASS-RADIUS RELATIONSHIPS FOR SOLID EXOPLANETS
S. Seager, M. Kuchner, C. A. Hier-Majumder, B. Militzer4

http://fr.arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.2895v1.pdf

On page 21 is a fantastic graph "Mass-radius relationship for solid planets" where the mass-radius lines for planets of different compositions are plotted.

Since the COROT team seems to be looking at ground-based confirmation of some of these detections, they must be looking for RV measurements to tie into the radii from the transits..... where on the "mass-radius relationship for solid planets" graph will these "planets" fall?

Craig

You're welcome and neither can I...
What will have this guys to present us?...
Thanks for the paper, it might get useful in the future!

ustrax...

keep reporting....

I have the graph from the Seager et al paper hanging on my office wall. People drop in and see that and it gives me an excuse to launch into a discussion on extrasolar planets.

From the excellent site Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia I get the following stats...
http://exoplanet.eu/catalog-all.php?&mode=2&more=

So far we have discovered the following population of planets that are less messive than Saturn (our smallest
gas giant in the Sol system)

Lower mass planets discovered aroung main sequence stars
31 planets < Saturn mass
12 planets < Neptune mass
4 planets < 10Eeath mass (super Earths?)

REALLY interested in what the COROT folks will present.

Craig

Hoo boy...this could be a demarcation between one epoch & the next. Looking forward to your reports, US!!!

Does anyone know when Epsilon Eridani b reaches its "Kodak Moment"? In October, 2006, a team from U Texas Austin announced that in late 2007 they may be able to directly observe an extrasolar planet for the first time.

Is there a site listing transits of extrasolar planets?

Thanks,


Brad

Late December (the exact date depends on HST scheduling issues).

Got some words from Malcolm Fridlund telling that there will be a press release within the next few weeks.
Currently the team is debating how much to put in it.

...How much to put in?

...How much to put in?!

How about...everything??!!

Agree... want EVERYTHING!!!

Thanks ustrax

Craig

p.s. you have a great blog....

Agreed, Rui...overall excellence for your blog, you got me on the daily hook!

This is a cliffhanger...can hardly wait to see what they may tell us...

Thanks guys...

I woke up with this interrogation flying around my head...what to put in?...
Did he meant to say that, first...they are choosing the most important ones or...second...may it be a question of spectacular abundance of discovered exoplanets and they just can't decide what to present to the public?

IMO they are debating where to draw the line that separates what they feel they can state with confidence, and the more speculative stuff.
If these two are clearly separated, it is no problem to announce both.
However, the press is always ready to jump on the vagon of speculation waving huge red flags, so the team's carefulness is understandable and appreciated.

The COROT announcement has been delayed...

Hold on! Before you start booing ESA this was done to permit the team to have their scientific publications written and submitted to refereed journals...
And there is already a date, Dec 10.

All...

more hints from the COROT team.... "300 days in orbit"
http://exoplanet.eu/papers/CoRoT-300days.pdf

This was posted on the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia site
http://exoplanet.eu/

Craig

Danke Craig!

And thanks right back at cha!!!!!

I feel famous

Craig

You're welcome...

Three more...this is getting boring...

boring? never. BTW:

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/0711...ve-planets.html

The party goes on.

You didn't take me seriously didn't you?...

Fridlund's teaser-update, a writing session, from where some papers should come out, will take place within two weeks, 20-21 Nov, in Paris...anyone around with sneaking abilities?

My Mission Impossible days are over..... But Paris sure sounds nice to this USA midwesterner!!!!

I am, of course, hoping for big revelations, but seriously think that any report as big as terrestrial radii planets will probably have to wait for good solid RV mass determinatons... and this might be too soon for that.

At the least, they can report that planet transit probables are VERY common... which bodes well. Also believe there wil be a strong desire, given what they find, to trump KEPLER.

Noticed the audio press conference regarding 55Cancri f did not even mention COROT, but KEPLER was mentioned several times. I do not care WHO finds WHAT, as long as the exploration continues.

viva la planete!!!!!!

Craig

Debra Fischer visited the blog and her hopes, by what it seems to me, are not so on KEPLER but on JWST, and she mentioned COROT...
She also makes reference to her wish of seing a spaceborn astrometry mission but the costs man...the costs?!
Fischer hopes that resources can be pooled across the world, working together is the way she sees things happening...
That sounds good...EVERYONE finding EVERYTHING...

Ustrax... just got back from your blog.

Nice interview with Debra Fischer.......

Cooperation is a necessity for the really large space telescope wish lists like SIM and TPF.

Found a white paper regarding JWST contribution of astrobiology (geez, I remember when we called it exobiology). http://www.stsci.edu/jwst/science/whitepap...ST-astrobio.pdf

There is a whole set of JWST white papers online
http://www.stsci.edu/jwst/science/whitepapers/

Given what Spitzer has contributed to exoplanet and dust disks research, JWST will be great!!!!!

Craig

Sorry Ustrax but in addition to sneaking abilities I would also need splitting capacities because I will be in business trip in Italy at this time.

brellis asked: "when will Epsilon Eridani b have its Kodak moment?"

DelPalmer answered:

Where might one find an HST observing schedule?
Will they be able to get a good look without ACS?

found it

http://www.stsci.edu/hst/scheduling/weekly_timeline

Is December 10 still the day scheduled for the big COROT announcement? Any news?

Phillip

Apparently it wasn't.

And nope, nothing. The silence is deafening.

The COROT science team had a meeting yesterday, but it was just a meeting, not an announcement.

The mission, like other transit searches, suffers from the fact that available telescope time is limited. The candidate planets must be confirmed using the RV method. In addition, it is very hard if not impossible to measure radial velocities caused by the smallest planets detected by the spacecraft.

This is being quite a rollercoaster not permitting much activity lately at spacEurope, but COROT deserves a special attention.
Just read an e-mail from Fridlund.
The press conference has been delayed, but not for long, where you have read the 10th read now the 20th...

I'm preparing an article on COROT, looking forward to that briefing...

Thanks Jyril and ustrax...

I think I am looking at the 20th as more of a COROT team progress update, rather than a formal "look at the planets we found"
announcement.

Any terrestrial sized planet candidates are going to take some sensitive RV verifications, and will take a lot of dedicated ground telescope time ..... so I am not expecting any thing along those lines.

Look forward all the same at learning how sensitive COROT is... the hints are tantalizing.

Craig

ps ustrax... good to see back with the blog!!!!

The most sensitive Doppler detections are possible for planets which are known to transit. The star's mean Doppler shift varies during transit as the planet covers up pieces rotating at different line-of-sight velocities (the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect, IIRC). The amplitude of this effect often exceeds the reflex Doppler signature of the planet on the star's motion, as shown from Doppler curves of known transiting massive planets, and if you have the transit ephemeris you can time your observations to be specifically during the transit rather than requiring multiple periods. So this is another way that transit candidates can help leverage spectroscopic capabilities in a powerful way. A good thing, too, since there are ways dim stellar companions can do a good job of mimicking the behavior of a planetary transit (notably grazing secondary eclipses).

Good point NGC3314.

Ground based telescopes are doing some amazing things now.

They still have to get telescope time and wait for the target stars to be visible during the observing season. And before they announce terrestrial planets, they are going to want to really nail em down.

I do expect some really interesting announcements over the next few years....

Craig

December 20 = just in time for a nicely wrapped, little Christmas gift from Santa Corot, perhaps?

Phillip

The Chief Scientist, has been awarded a French medal - this sounds like he found something a lot more exciting than just another hot-jupiter. Press conference in Paris tomorrow, hopefully we will see some intriguing results then
will we be hearing anything from the astro seismology working group ?

Fridlund just informed from the time of the conference: 11AM, CET, with an article at ESA site at 1PM.

I'll try to get get something more soon...

CoRoT-Exo-2b, a run of the mill transiting hot Jupiter. This can't be all they're revealing...

Information released here.

EDITED: Jyril...looks like that was it...

From the press release:

"On 10 December 2007, the first set of data obtained by COROT was released to the Co-Investigators of the mission. These scientists hail from the member states of the COROT consortium (ESA, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Germany, and Spain). The actual analysis of large amounts of data has just begun and is expected to speed-up with the release of the next data segment in February 2008.

In the data obtained, many light curves show signs of exoplanets in transit and are being followed-up from ground.
The discovery of COROT-exo-1b and COROT-exo-2b is described in three scientific papers that will be submitted to scientific journals in the next few days.

COROT has observed four regions so far:

One zone in the direction of the constellation of the Unicorn (Monoceros) for 60 days
Two regions in the opposite direction on the sky, towards the constellation of the Snake's tail (Serpens Cauda) – one short for 26 days and one long for 150 days.
A new region in the direction of the Unicorn, where COROT will remain for at least 150 days "


They mention the data has just been released - it does not surprise me that the first confirmed planets are hot jupiters.... those are "easy" to pull from the data.

We need patience..... I am sure there is much gold to be mined from the data.... it will just take time to identify candidates and them confirm with rv measurements.

We live in marvleous times....

Craig

"COROT surprises a year after launch"

That's not surprising - that's what we expected.

DOug

full inline quote removed - did that surprise you - Doug

Yes...your reaction is no surprise either...that's what I expected too...

I'm not playing down COROT...it's great - but saying that the discovery of X Jupiter mass planets is a surpise is about as surprising as the MER APXS finding a strong Fe signal on Mars. It's a great sign that everything's workign great, but going on what they hinted at at Europlanet - I was expecting a new type of discovery, not just a new discovery of a planet. 'On Course' - 'Performing Well' - those are appropriate phrases here. It'd be a surprise if it HADN'T detected planets like this.

Doug

OK...maybe surprise is not the right word...
I had somehow higher expectations regarding this...but...as said before and by others the best is on it's way...

The best of the release is, for me, the detection of oscillations in stars "very similar to our sun"...

EDITED: And what about this?...Isn't it exciting? 40 possible new exoplanets?!!
We're sooo spoiled...

"According to the COROT team there are already, and beyond the two exoplanets already discovered under the mission, CoRoT-exo-1b and CoRoT-exo-2b, around 40 light curves containing signs of possible planets.
Further ground analysis is necessary to confirm their true nature.

Among these possible exoplanets there are two candidates particularly promising...a planet two times smaller than Saturn and another one of jovian size but with a unusual density..."

Yes, that's it. Exciting, but not surprising. And I bet many people here
will not be surprised if many, many earth-sized planets are found when
the ability to detect them has been fully achieved. That will be immensely
exciting, but not in the least surprising.

Only 40? Based on other transiting surveys, most candidates turn out to be false positives so that is not much (yes, I'm spoiled...). On the other hand, they're only just started analyzing the data.

They said on the radio (France Inter) that they detected star vibrations. They put some sounds together but I cannot Google them properly. If somebody can.

By star vibrations, do you mean astroseismological phenomena, Climber? If so, I suspect that's where the real "surprises" may be lurking in the data. Fine-scale periodic changes in a given stars pulsation patterns might provide clues about the existence of planets much smaller then 1 Mj, but it would be one hell of a job of analysis...

I was also looking forward to a big announcement. Ah well, that's the scientific process, I guess. It seems like it's going to take a good while to get the discovery pipeline cranking.

Only...but all of them are from Sun-like stars, that's...exciting...isn't it?
Even if not all are exoplanets, those being are really promising.

The jovian-sized candidate to which is made reference in the release by having an unusual density...got it...Fridlund finds it really odd, it has half the Saturn density, which indicates that this might be a planet with no metals at all...

Not wanting to advertise here just to say that Malcolm Fridlund made himself available to answer the questions of those reading spacEurope, if you guys have any thing you would like to see clarified from the press conference fo from the mission itself please, be my guest.

Not to be too big of a spoiler, but it's not clear that discovering more hot Jupiters really amounts to much useful science at all. We already know that a few percent of stars have them, and most of what's to do is to add some "N" to the statistics of number, size distribution, etc. I suppose a survey now could also help when the day comes that more sophisticated techniques exist to image them or perform spectroscopy. But in the short run, each new one discovered means very little.

We'll learn more by finding one terrestrial planet (or, improbably, prove the lack of existence thereof) than we would in finding 4 million more hot Jupiters or eccentric Jupiters. That's what makes this report so underwhelming. But of course, the mission is not done yet.