Demonstrating High-precision Photometry with a CubeSat: ASTERIA Observations of 55 Cancri e

Exoplanetsat: High Precision Photometry for Exoplanet Transit Detections in a 3u Cubesat

ExoplanetSat is a 3U CubeSat which will detect transiting “superEarth” exoplanets around bright, nearby sun-like stars. The ExoplanetSat prototype will focus on stars with low-mass planets (discovered by radial velocity planetfinding surveys)—planets which are not yet known to transit. No other current ground or space-based mission is capable of observing these systems, one star at at a time, o...

Detection of a transit of the super-Earth 55 Cancri e with warm Spitzer⋆

We report on the detection of a transit of the super-Earth 55 Cnc e with warm Spitzer in IRAC’s 4.5 μm band. Our MCMC analysis includes an extensive modeling of the systematic effects affecting warm Spitzer photometry, and yields a transit depth of 410±63 ppm, which translates to a planetary radius of 2.08 −0.17 R⊕ as measured in IRAC 4.5 μm channel. A planetary mass of 7.81 +0.58 −0.53 M⊕ is d...

Dynamics of the 55 Cancri System

Recent studies of the 55 Cancri system suggest the existence of three planets with periods of ∼15 days, ∼45 days, and ∼5500 days (Marcy et al. 2002). The inner two planets are near the 3:1 mean motion commensurability and it is likely that these two planets became trapped in the resonance while farther from the star and migrated together. As the innermost planet begins to dissipate energy throu...

High Precision Photometry of Transiting Exoplanets

A dynamical perspective on additional planets in 55 Cancri

Five planets are known to orbit the star 55 Cancri. The recently-discovered planet f at 0.78 AU (Fischer et al. 2008) is located at the inner edge of a previously-identified stable zone that separates the three close-in planets from planet d at 5.9 AU. Here we map the stability of the orbital space between planets f and d using a suite of n-body integrations that include an additional, yet-to-b...