Understanding the Orbits of Exoplanets
Originally Posted: July 30, 2024
While recently migrating and updating my website, I realized that I didn't have much on here about my undergraduate work. So, I decided to go back and retroactively add this post to my list of projects. This post is about my first, first-authored paper. This was published a few months after I started graduate school and represents the culmination of the research work I did during my four years of undergrad.
Plain Language Summary
The idea behind this paper was to learn about the orbit and other properties of a particular exoplanet called KOI-972.01. To do this, we used what is called transit light curve data. Basically, as a planet orbits a distant star, sometimes that planet will pass between the star and the Earth. As a result, from here on Earth the star will appear to dim slightly as the planet blocks some of its light. This dimming is called a transit, and we can study its shape to learn about both the star and the planet. In this paper, we combined two different techniques (stellar variability analysis and gravity darkening analysis) to study the transit. By doing this we were able to show that the planet is roughly the size of Neptune, but were unfortunately still unable to really confirm the orbit shape.
Science Abstract
We analyze Kepler photometry of transiting planet candidate KOI-972.01, accounting for both stellar variability and gravity darkening. KOI-972.01 stands out because of its small radius, less than that of Neptune, and because of its intermediate orbit period at 13.12 days, long enough to avoid significant tidal evolution, and thus it represents an underexplored exoplanet class. The parent star of KOI-972.01 is a rapidly rotating $\delta$-Scuti variable, complicating transit lightcurve interpretation but also offering a potential independent source of stellar parameters. We measure the stellar rotation period (16.2 hr) by identifying the stellar rotation frequency and subsequently place a constraint on the stellar obliquity of no greater than 10, but have difficulty isolating individual oscillation modes in the periodogram owing to time variation of the $\delta$-Scuti oscillations. After subtracting the stellar oscillations, lightcurve fits place the transiting object radius at 3.07 $\pm$ 0.09 R_{$\ocross$}, but the shallow transit prevents useful constraints on the system's spin-orbit alignment.