News
What do we know about the birth of planets?
Dr Farzana Meru, an astrophysicist here at the University of Warwick, explains what we know - and what we don't ... yet.
NGTS-4b: A sub-Neptune transiting in the desert
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
Pondering panspermia - how life could travel through space
James Blake, a postgraduate student in the Warwick Astronomy & Astrophysics Group, gives an overview of his summer project researching the topic of panspermia and applying the theory to the exciting TRAPPIST-1 planetary system.
Dynamical and Biological Panspermia Constraints Within Multiplanet Exosystems
Dimitri Veras leads an interdisciplinary team of astronomers and biologists in a study exploring the dynamical and biological constraints of interplanetary panspermia. This is the theory that life can hop from planet to planet via some mechanism, most likely aboard asteroids or comets.
This work was published in Astrobiology, Volume 18, Number 9
Open access link: arXiv
CEH members involved: Dimitri Veras (lead), David Armstrong, James Blake, Jose Gutiérrez-Marcos & Hendrik Schäefer
Ground-based detection of G star superflares with NGTS
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