Conference: Exoplanets III ?>

Conference: Exoplanets III

Exoplanets III conference background image
This week the Exoplanets III is taking place – it has been moved from Heidelberg into a virtual format because of the Covid-19 pandemic. I’m really excited about this particular conference, because it looks like a really well thought-out way to do an online conference, with all talks being available as videos for non-synchronous viewing, interactive online posters, and active discussion on Slack. Several of our group members are presenting their work:

PhD students:
Laura Ketzer: Poster “Using PLATYPOS to estimate the atmospheric mass loss of V1298 Tau’s four young planets”
Vada Xanthippi Alexoudi: Poster “On the degeneracy of the planetary spectral slope with orbital parameters”
Engin Keles: poster “Probing the atmosphere of HD189733b with the Na-I and K-I lines”

Postdocs/Prof:
Matthias Mallonn: poster “Challenging the weather forecast: the observational study of day side clouds”
myself: talk “Connecting the exoplanet radius gap with stellar activity evolution”

plus a few more are attending (Grace Foster, Nikoleta Ilic).

Paper on the atmospheric evaporation of four very young exoplanets ?>

Paper on the atmospheric evaporation of four very young exoplanets

The four young planets of V1298 Tau lose different fractions of their atmospheres, depending on the star’s spin-down behaviour (from Poppenhaeger et al. 2020).
Together with my PhD student Laura Ketzer and postdoc Matthias Mallonn, we have published a new paper on the atmospheric evaporation of the four very young planets around the star V1298 Tau. We measured the star’s X-ray spectrum by combining ROSAT and Chandra observations, and found that the star is highly active with an X-ray luminosity above 10^30 erg/s. Laura developed a numerical code to estimate the planetary evaporation as the star ages and becomes less X-ray bright. Depending on the masses of the planetary cores and the age at which the star will start spinning down, some of the planets may lose their complete atmosphere by the time the star reaches the age of our Sun.

This paper was also featured in a press release of our institute: https://www.aip.de/en/news/science/four-newborn-exoplanets-get-cooked-by-their-sun?set_language=en

For a read, go here: “X-ray irradiation and evaporation of the four young planets around V1298 Tau”, Poppenhaeger, K.; Ketzer, L.; Mallonn, M., Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Advance Access, May 2020

Paper on the magnetic activity of old sunlike stars ?>

Paper on the magnetic activity of old sunlike stars

Chromospheric activity of old sun-like stars as a function of age, with sample stars of spectral type G (green) and late-F (blue), with hotter stars (red) as a comparison. Data from clusters is shown as black symbols. No “coasting” type of behavior, i.e. a stopping of the decay of stellar activity, is seen in this sample.

My freshly graduated PhD student, Dr. Rachel Booth, has published the final paper from her PhD thesis together with me and a few coworkers. We have analysed how the magnetic activity of sun-like stars decays as they age, and have used a sample of stars that all have well-determined asteroseismic ages. We find that even at old stellar ages on the main sequence the spin down and therefore the decay of stellar activity continues.

For a read go here: “Chromospheric emission of solar-type stars with asteroseismic ages“, Booth, R. S.; Poppenhaeger, K.; Watson, C. A.; Silva Aguirre, V.; Stello, D.; Bruntt, H., Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 491, Issue 1, p.455-467, 2020. (arXiv link).

Paper on alkali metals in an exoplanet’s atmosphere ?>

Paper on alkali metals in an exoplanet’s atmosphere

Artist’s impression of the hot Jupiter (right) and its cool host star. Credit: AIP/Kristin Riebe

Together with my colleagues at AIP, and led by Engin Keles, a PhD student in my Star-Planet Systems group, we have published a paper on the detection of potassium in the atmosphere of a Hot Jupiter using high-resolution transmission spectroscopy.

The potassium absorption on HD189733b and HD209458b, Keles, E.; Mallonn, M.; von Essen, C.; Carroll, T. A.; Alexoudi, X.; Pino, L.; Ilyin, I.; Poppenhäger, K.; Kitzmann, D.; Nascimbeni, V.; Turner, J. D.; Strassmeier, K. G.

The Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) was used with the PEPSI spectrograph in this work; both the LBT and our institute published press releases about the result (LBT press release; AIP press release). This is an exciting result because not all Hot Jupiters have potassium detected in their atmospheres, even when they have detections of the similar element sodium. The data will be used to gain more insight into the atmospheric chemistry of Hot Jupiters.

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters, Volume 489, Issue 1, p.L37-L41 (2019).

White paper on X-ray interferometry ?>

White paper on X-ray interferometry

From Uttley et al. (2019).

Together with many colleagues, I have contributed to a White Paper on a possible X-ray Interferometry mission. This project is led by Phil Uttley from the University of Amsterdam, and we hope to be considered for ESA’s Vision 2050 mission slot. X-ray interferometry can yield amazing spatial resolution for bright X-ray sources, even though there is still quite some technology to be developed. For stars and exoplanets, we could spatially resolve transits in front of the stellar corona – see the conceptual image I made for the White Paper.

“The high energy universe at ultra-high resolution: the power and promise of X-ray interferometry “, P. Uttley and 26 co-authors including K. Poppenhaeger, A White Paper submitted in response to ESA’s Voyage 2050 call, arXiv 1908.03144 (2019).

Exostar19 research program in Santa Barbara ?>

Exostar19 research program in Santa Barbara

This summer I organized a 3-month research program called Exostar19 (https://www.kitp.ucsb.edu/activities/exostar19) at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) in Santa Barbara, together with Bekki Dawson, Dan Huber, and Jim Fuller. Victor Silva Aguirre was the one who brought us all together with his idea to come up with a program that focuses on all the new insights that the stellar and planetary field can gain from TESS and Gaia data. It’s now the last week of the program, and it’s been a blast! My office has a view onto a little slice of the ocean, just behind the palm trees:

Beachside office view

and I’ve worked on a bunch of cool new projects with new collaborators – stellar rotation and activity, X-ray and UV observations of exoplanets, some work on transits in the infrared helium lines, plus a near wrap-up of a project on an ultrahot Jupiter. We’ve held a conference in the middle of the program, which went really well I think (https://www.kitp.ucsb.edu/activities/exostar-c19). I really liked the KITP policy that all of their conferences have one third of questions time. So every talk was 20 minutes plus 10 minutes questions, and that led a really lively and interesting discussions, and just just by the same few people that always ask questions at other conferences.

This is us organizers:

Left to right: Jim Fuller, Dan Huber, Katja Poppenhaeger, and Bekki Dawson.

I brought my family along, and we stayed in the KITP residence, which has very good spaces for people with kids. We had a lot of great barbecues with the other program participants, and also managed to spend a bit of time at the beach.

New paper: a small planet in the temperate zone of K2-133 ?>

New paper: a small planet in the temperate zone of K2-133

A new paper by my PhD student Rob Wells is now accepted for publication:

“Validation of a temperate fourth planet in the K2-133 multiplanet system“, Wells, R.; Poppenhaeger, K.; Watson, C. A.

Phase-folded light curve of the fourth planet in the K2-133 system, with best-fitting model (Wells et a. 2019).

Abstract: We present follow-up observations of the K2-133 multiplanet system. Previously, we announced that K2-133 contained three super-Earths orbiting an M1.5V host star – with tentative evidence of a fourth outer-planet orbiting at the edge of the temperate zone. Here, we report on the validation of the presence of the fourth planet, determining a radius of 1.73 R⊕. The four planets span the radius gap of the exoplanet population, meaning further follow-up would be worthwhile to obtain masses and test theories of the origin of the gap. In particular, the trend of increasing planetary radius with decreasing incident flux in the K2-133 system supports the claim that the gap is caused by photo-evaporation of exoplanet atmospheres. Finally, we note that K2-133 e orbits on the edge of the star’s temperate zone, and that our radius measurement allows for the possibility that this is a rocky world. Additional mass measurements are required to confirm or refute this scenario.

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 487, Issue 2, p.1865-1873, 2019.

Review on star-planet systems ?>

Review on star-planet systems

My review talk on interactions in star-planet systems I gave at the XMM-Newton science workshop in summer 2018 is now published in a peer-reviewed article:

“How stars and planets interact: A look through the high-energy window“, Poppenhaeger, Katja

Montage of a close-in Hot Jupiter orbiting a cool star with the solar corona as background, all object sizes and distances to scale (taking the values of the WASP-12 exoplanet system as an example). Some exoplanets are close enough to their host stars to orbit within the outer structures of the stellar corona. Solar corona image by K. van Gorm, montage by K. Poppenhaeger.

Abstract: The architecture of exoplanetary systems is often different from the solar system, with some exoplanets being in close orbits around their host stars and having orbital periods of only a few days. In analogy to interactions between stars in close binary systems, one may expect interactions between the star and the exoplanet as well. From theoretical considerations, effects on the host star through tidal and magnetic interaction with the exoplanet are possible; for the exoplanet, some interesting implications are the evaporation of the planetary atmosphere and potential effects on the planetary magnetism. In this review, several possible interaction pathways and their observational prospects and existing evidence are discussed. A particular emphasis is put on observational opportunities for these kinds of effects in the high-energy regime.

Astronomische Nachrichten, Volume 340, Issue 4, pp. 329-333, 2019.

New papers: exoplanets and stellar results from NGTS ?>

New papers: exoplanets and stellar results from NGTS

Explanetary radii versus their equilibrium temperature, NGTS-2b is indicated as one of the known inflated exoplanets, from Raynard et al. (2018).
The Next Generation Transit Survey has had some new discoveries over the past few months which I was happy to contribute to. We’ve discovered a new exoplanet (an inflated hot Jupiter), a fully-convective eclipsing binary system, and a giant flare with pulsations on a pre-main sequence M star. The papers are:

“NGTS-2b: an inflated hot-Jupiter transiting a bright F-dwarf”, L. Raynard and 44 co-authors including K. Poppenhaeger, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 481, Issue 4, p.4960-4970 (2018)

“A low-mass eclipsing binary within the fully convective zone from the Next Generation Transit Survey”, S. Casewell and 24 co-authors including K. Poppenhaeger, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 481, Issue 2, p.1897-1907 (2018)

“Detection of a giant flare displaying quasi-periodic pulsations from a pre-main-sequence M star by the Next Generation Transit Survey”, J. Jackman and 20 co-authors including K. Poppenhaeger, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 482, Issue 4, p.5553-5566 (2019)

Home colloquium at AIP ?>

Home colloquium at AIP

Title slide of my talk today.

Today I gave the colloquium talk at my new home institution, the AIP. I chose a quite relatable title with “A field trip to the exoplanet zoo”, and I was blown away by how many people showed up. We actually had to open the second half of the lecture hall, which is usually only done for conferences – quite flattering! It was good fun and my colleagues from the AIP and the university had a bunch of interesting questions. Looking forward to all the science I’ll do here from now on.