CEH member Richard West leads the fascinating discovery of an exoplanet that falls in the middle of what has been termed the 'Neptunian desert'. This refers to a region close-in to the parent star where previously no Neptune-sized exoplanets had been found. NGTS-4b has a mass 20 times that of the Earth and orbits its star (a 13th mag K dwarf) once every 1.34 days! What's more, it's the smallest planet discovered by a wide-field ground-based photometric survey to date - excellent work!

This study was published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 486, Issue 4, July 2019, Pages 5094–5103

Open access link: arXiv

CEH members involved: Richard West (lead), Daniel Bayliss, James Jackman, George King, James McCormac, Peter Wheatley, David Armstrong, Paul Chote, Ben Cooke, Emma Foxell, Boris Gänsicke, Tom Louden & Don Pollacco

CEH member James Jackman leads a recent study of flares in G-type stars, as observed using NGTS. The study shows that G-stars can have flares many times the energy of the Carrington event, and the primary detection is one of the largest amplitude superflares detected from a bright G star.

This work was published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 477, Issue 4, p.4655-4664

Open access link: arXiv

CEH members involved: James Jackman (lead), Peter Wheatley, Chloe Pugh, Boris Gänsicke, Anne-Marie Broomhall, David Armstrong & James McCormac

CEH member Mark Hollands leads a new study which examines pollution of cool DZ white dwarfs.

This work was published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 477, Issue 1, p.93-111

Open access link: arXiv

CEH members involved: Mark Hollands (lead), Boris Gänsicke

The Next Generation Transit Survey, which is led by CEH member Peter Wheatley, has publised its third planet discovery. NGTS-3Ab is in an unresolved binary system, and vetting the planet was a challenging task that produced new insights in BIS correlations in exoplanet observations.

This work was published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 478, Issue 4, August 2018, Pages 4720–4737

Open access link: arXiv

CEH members involved: James McCormac, David Armstrong, Benjamin Cooke, Boris Gänsicke, Tom Louden, Don Pollacco & Peter Wheatley

CEH member George King has published an exciting study looking at the extreme UV environment of several exoplanets, including a detection of the transit of WASP-80b in the NUV using XMM Newton.

The study was published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 478, Issue 1, July 2018, Pages 1193–1208

Open access link: arXiv

CEH members involved: George King, Peter Wheatley & Tom Louden