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Extrasolar Planets

Laboratory scientists are involved in a wide range of research on the properties of planets, including planets that orbit other stars. More than 200 of these extrasolar planets are known, and many of them orbit quite close to their parent stars - as close as 0.05 astronomical units (AUs, 1 AU = the distance from the Earth to the Sun). At these close distances, planets are strongly heated by their stars, and they emit copious amount of infrared radiation. Research in our laboratory is directed to the detection and characterization of these hot extrasolar planets in the infrared spectral region, using both ground-based and space-borne facilities. The first direct detection of electromagnetic radiation emitted by an extrasolar planet (HD 209458b) was made in our Laboratory by D. Deming and his collaborators, using the Spitzer Space Telescope. They detected the secondary eclipse in this transiting planet system at 24 micrometers wavelength (the secondary eclipse is when the planet disappears behind the star, and reappears 3 hours later). Simultaneously, a group at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (led by David Charbonneau) detected the secondary eclipse of the planet TrES-1 at 8 and 4.5 micrometers. Continued work in our Laboratory is focusing on the spectra of these worlds, using the secondary eclipse and other techniques.

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