Project support for the Wide Area Search for Planets
Lead Research Organisation:
Queen's University Belfast
Department Name: Sch of Mathematics and Physics
Abstract
Questions such as ``how many stars have planets around them?'' and ``how many habitable planets are there?'' interest both astronomers and everyone else. To answer them we need to find planets that can be studied in detail, seeking to understand the processes by which planets form and solar systems evolve. Of the two hundred planets that astronomers have found orbiting other stars we can learn most about those that transit in front of their star. We can measure how big they are, how heavy they are, and thus deduce their density and what they are made of. And by looking at how their atmosphere absorbs the light of their star we can discover the composition of their atmospheres. The WASP project aims to monitor 40 million of the brightest stars, looking for the tiny dips in their light caused by a planet passing in front of them. We will survey the sky for the transiting planets that are relatively close to Earth, which we can study in detail to enable us to understand how planetary systems form and evolve. The next generation of space missions, such as the James Webb Space Telescope, the successor to Hubble, will prioritize the study of planets around other stars. The WASP project will find the planets that will make the best and most interesting targets.
Organisations
Publications
Triaud A
(2010)
Spin-orbit angle measurements for six southern transiting planets New insights into the dynamical origins of hot Jupiters???
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Miller G
(2010)
The Doppler shadow of WASP-3b A tomographic analysis of Rossiter-McLaughlin observations
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Smalley B
(2010)
WASP-26b: a 1-Jupiter-mass planet around an early-G-type star
in Astronomy and Astrophysics
Butters O
(2010)
The first WASP public data release
in Astronomy and Astrophysics
Gibson N
(2010)
Ground-based detection of thermal emission from the exoplanet WASP-19b
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters
Hebb L
(2010)
MML 53: a new low-mass, pre-main sequence eclipsing binary in the Upper Centaurus-Lupus region discovered by SuperWASP
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Bouchy F
(2010)
WASP-21b: a hot-Saturn exoplanet transiting a thick disc star
in Astronomy and Astrophysics
Norton A
(2011)
Short period eclipsing binary candidates identified using SuperWASP
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Madhusudhan N
(2011)
A high C/O ratio and weak thermal inversion in the atmosphere of exoplanet WASP-12b.
in Nature
Anderson D
(2011)
WASP-30b: A 61 M Jup BROWN DWARF TRANSITING A V = 12, F8 STAR
in The Astrophysical Journal