Astronomy 94: Exoplanet Research
at the Peter van de Kamp Observatory

Announcements

Mon., May 6: The semester is over! Keep an eye out for articles in the news about new exoplanet discoveries...we'll see how many earth-like planets in the habitable zones of their host stars have been discovered by this time next year.

Archive of old announcements.

Assignments

Mon., May 6: As a culminating experience, you might enjoy reading this article that just appeared in Science this past week: Observed Properties of Exoplanets, by Andrew Howard, which summarizes our current observational knowledge of exoplanet system properties.

Archive of old assignments.

Upcoming Events

Check the departmental colloquium schedule.

There are telescope public viewings the second Tuesday of each month, at the Peter van de Kamp Observatory. The next one is on May 14, at 9 PM. Further information is available. I'd welcome help from any of you in running these events.

Class Information

Office Hours: Mondays 3:30 to 5:00

class meeting time is Tue. 11:20 - 12:35

We will mostly take data at the telescope on Wednesday or Thursday evenings, spending an hour or two at the telescope, but not every week.

Links

exoplanets.org: an updated, quality-controlled database of all known exoplanets. Explore the properties of the exoplanets with the customizable data plotter.

systemic: exoplanet news and ideas from Prof. Greg Laughlin at UC Santa Cruz.

the Kepler mission: a dedicated space telescope for discovering exoplanets via the transit method.

The binary orbit simulator and eclipsing binary simulator you looked at in our "zeroth" assignment and which we explored in class during week 4.

ADS abstract service: search for research papers

SIMBAD: information about astronomical objects

astronomy picture of the day

this week's sky at a glance from Sky & Telescope

what's up tonight? from space.com

recent astronomical events

weather information and models

library astronomy resources

constants and astronomical data

Tables of constants and data from Ryden & Peterson: Table A1: Physical Constants, Table A2: Astronomical Constants, Table A3: The Planets