Masses and Properties of Extrasolar Planets
| dc.contributor.author | Sinukoff, Evan J. | |
| dc.contributor.department | Astronomy | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2019-05-28T19:31:47Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2019-05-28T19:31:47Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2018-08 | |
| dc.description.abstract | NASA's Kepler Mission revealed that the majority of planets orbiting close to Sun-like stars are between the size of Earth and Neptune. Yet these \super-Earths" and \sub-Neptunes" are absent from our Solar System. The distributions of planet properties measured by Kepler | radii and orbital periods | have been precisely measured, but we do not yet have a good understanding of their masses and bulk compositions, which can ultimately be linked to their origins. Follow-up measurements of the masses of a few dozen Kepler planets demonstrated that planets smaller than 1.5 Earth-radii are predominantly rocky, while larger planets typically have gaseous envelopes. Measurements of mass and radius do not provide a one-to-one relationship, indicating that compositions might depend on environmental parameters like temperature, and properties of the host star. Building on this, we leverage NASA's K2 mission to identify and measure the masses of dozens more small planets orbiting bright stars. After nearly doubling the number of small planets with measured densities, and precisely characterizing each host star, we re-examined the distribution of planet bulk compositions, the transition from rocky to gas-dominated planets, and their dependencies on temperature and host star properties. Planet core mass is correlated with host star metallicity, suggesting that the availability of solids aects planet composition. There are two distinct planet populations | \super-Earths" consisting of 1{2 R cores with little to no gas, and larger \sub-Neptunes" with H/He envelopes comprising & 1% of their total mass. The gap between these populations appears devoid of sub-Neptunes with the most tenuous atmospheres (<1% H/He), indicating that such planets experience complete photoevaporation. | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10125/62172 | |
| dc.language | eng | |
| dc.publisher | University of Hawaii at Manoa | |
| dc.subject | Astronomy | |
| dc.subject | exoplanets | |
| dc.title | Masses and Properties of Extrasolar Planets | |
| dc.type | Thesis | |
| dc.type.dcmi | Text | |
| dcterms.description | Ph.D. Thesis. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 2018. |
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