Entering into new territory of exoplanet characterization

Research Project, 2021 – 2022

So far exoplanetary systems have mostly been discovered in transit photometry from space missions providing a measure of sizes and orbital parameters. The planetary masses are commonly found from radial velocity (RV) measurements using ground-based observations. However, most detected exoplanets today have only measured sizes since their host stars are too faint to allow RV observations, and thus the planet compositions are unknown. Another way to find masses is via transit timing variations (TTVs) in photometry. However, each method alone gives only an incomplete picture. The aim of this project is to combine RV and TTVs with a completely novel method to obtain masses and a more comprehensive picture for planets that have previously not been possible to model. This will be extremely important in future exoplanet research. The objectives are (1) to constrain orbital parameters and masses for dynamically interesting targets to understand their formation and evolution; (2) to determine the frequency of planetary systems consisting of low-mass planets and massive outer companions; This project will use data from two ongoing space missions: NASA’S Tess and the European Cheops.