ESPRESSO Archives

This artist’s impression shows Barnard b, a sub-Earth-mass planet that was discovered orbiting Barnard’s star. Its signal was detected with the ESPRESSO instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), and astronomers were able to confirm it with data from other instruments. An earlier promising detection in 2018 around the same star could not be confirmed by these data. On this newly discovered exoplanet, which has at least half the mass of Venus but is too hot to support liquid water, a year lasts just over three Earth days.Credit:ESO/M. Kornmesser

Astronomy & Telescopes, Barnard's Star, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Press Release

A Sub-Earth Mass Planet Has Been Discovered Orbiting Barnard’s Star

by Keith CowingOctober 1, 2024October 1, 2024

Using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), astronomers have discovered an exoplanet orbiting Barnard’s star, the closest single star to our Sun. On this newly discovered exoplanet, […]

tpfplotter target pixel file (TPF) image of TOI-406 as in Sector 3. The red squares correspond to the TESS aperture used to compute the photometry, the size of the red circles represent the Gaia DR3 (Gaia Collaboration et al. 2023) magnitudes of the stars. TOI-406 is positioned at the center (star 1). Star 2 is a G = 16.887 mag star which contribution to the aperture flux was taken into account by the SPOC pipeline by calculating the crowding metric and subtracting the corresponding percentage (< 0.14 percent in all four sectors) of the median flux level to account for dilution. The TPF of all sectors are shown in Appendix A. -- astro-ph.EP

Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gaia Mission, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Characterisation of TOI-406 as Showcase of the THIRSTEE program: A 2-Planet System Straddling the M-dwarf Density Gap

by Keith CowingSeptember 19, 2024November 16, 2024

The exoplanet sub-Neptune population currently poses a conundrum. Are small-size planets volatile-rich cores without atmosphere, or are they rocky cores surrounded by H-He envelope? To test the different hypotheses from […]

XAO+PIAAN simulation scheme. -- astro-ph.IM

Astronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Proxima Centauri, Status Report

RISTRETTO: A VLT XAO Design To Reach Proxima Cen b In The Visible

by Keith CowingSeptember 13, 2024September 13, 2024

RISTRETTO is the evolution of the original idea of coupling the VLT instruments SPHERE and ESPRESSO lovis_2016a, aiming at High Dispersion Coronagraphy. RISTRETTO is a visitor instrument that should enable […]

Artist’s impression of the hotspot in WASP-76 b (Credit: Tania Cunha (Planetário do Porto - Centro Ciência Viva)/Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço)

Astrogeology, Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Press Release

Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço Paves The Way In The Field Of Exoclimatology

by Keith CowingSeptember 6, 2024September 6, 2024

Three papers about “hot jupiter” WASP-76 b, led by Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço researchers, will be the foundation for understanding the global climate of a giant exoplanet.

Mean−subtracted RV data plotted in gray dotted points for each of the HARPS (top panel), ESPRESSO (middle panel), and PFS (bottom panel) instruments, along with separate model curves for the planet model (blue solid line), the GP model (green solid line) and the full planet + GP model (magenta solid line). The error bars include the jitter component 𝜎 for each instrument, which was added in quadrature to the RV error for each data point. -- astro-ph.EP

Astronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

TOI-757 b: An Eccentric Transiting Mini-Neptune On Aa 17.5-d Orbit

by Keith CowingAugust 12, 2024August 10, 2024

We report the spectroscopic confirmation and fundamental properties of TOI-757 b, a mini-Neptune on a 17.5-day orbit transiting a bright star (V=9.7 mag) discovered by the TESS mission. We acquired […]

Full sample of 133 sub-Neptunes used in this study. The top-left panel shows the mass-radius relation. The (nearly)-resonant population is defined as ∆MMR 0.05. The black line is the sub-Neptune mass-radius relation from Parc et al. (2024). Other panels show the cumulative distributions for parameters of the planets or their host star. The pvalue given for each parameter is the probability that the distribution of that parameter is drawn form the same underlying distribution for the (nearly) resonant and non-resonant populations. The potential 2D correlation between parameters is explored in Fig. B.1. -- astro-ph.EP

Astrogeology, Astronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gas Giants, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

Resonant Sub-Neptunes Are Puffier

by Keith CowingJune 28, 2024June 28, 2024

A systematic, population-level discrepancy exists between the densities of exoplanets whose masses have been measured with transit timing variations (TTVs) versus those measured with radial velocities (RVs).

Phase folded TESS transit data with modeled allesfitter fit (grey), and residuals plot on the bottom. Also plotted are the phase folded points binned to 30 minutes (black). -- astro-ph.EP

Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

HD 21520 b: A Warm Sub-Neptune Transiting A Bright G Dwarf

by Keith CowingJune 17, 2024June 17, 2024

We report the discovery and validation of HD 21520 b, a transiting planet found with TESS and orbiting a bright G dwarf (V=9.2, Teff=5871±62 K, R⋆=1.04±0.02R⊙).

Transmission spectra models including H2O, CH4 and CO of TOI-3362 b (top) and TOI-677 b (bottom) in black with corresponding absorption bands of H2O, CH4 and CO for reference in shades of pink. Top panel: Model spectra of TOI3362 b including absorption of H2O, CH4 and CO. The models assume an isothermal atmosphere at the calculated equilibrium temperature of Teq,A=0 = 1 100 K. The corresponding abundance profiles were computed with FastChem Cond (Stock et al. 2018, 2022; Kitzmann et al. 2023), see Fig. 4, and then translated into mass fractions to produce the transmission models using petitRADTRANS (Mollière et al. 2019). The H2O mass fractions were scaled with factors of 1 (nominal), 10, 100, and 1000 for model injection. Considered absorption bands included in the model to identify the features. The absorption band models were computed under the same assumption, but only including the considered species. Bottom panel: Same as top panel, but for TOI-677 b. The models assume an isothermal atmosphere at the calculated equilibrium temperature of Teq = 1 252 K (Jordán et al. 2020). -- astro-ph.EP

Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gas Giants, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

High-resolution Transmission Spectroscopy Of Warm Jupiters: An ESPRESSO Sample With Predictions For ANDES

by Keith CowingJune 14, 2024

Warm Jupiter atmospheres predominantly consist of molecular species, notably water, methane and carbon monoxide, often accompanied by clouds and hazes muting their atmospheric features. In this study, we investigate the […]

TESS target pixel files for TOI-260 for sector 3 (left), and for TOI-286 for sector 1 ( right). The remaining sectors are shown in Appendix A. The target star is labelled as 1 and marked by a white cross in each case. All sources from the Gaia DR3 catalogue down to a magnitude contrast of 8 are shown as red circles, with the size proportional to the contrast. The SPOC pipeline aperture is overplotted in shaded red squares. -- astro-ph.EP

Habitable Zones, Status Report, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Three Super-Earths And A Possible Water World From TESS And ESPRESSO

by Keith CowingJune 12, 2024June 12, 2024

Since 2018, the ESPRESSO spectrograph at the VLT has been hunting for planets in the Southern skies via the RV method. One of its goals is to follow up candidate […]

The evolution of orbital plane and the change of impact parameter of TOI-1338 b’s primary and secondary transits. Top: the evolution of impact parameters of primary (red) and secondary transit (blue) integrated from the best-fit model. It shows that TOI-1338 b will permanently transit the primary star but hardly transit the secondary star. Bottom: the skyprojection view of the orbits of binary and TOI-1338 b. The orbit of TOI-1338 b is integrated 7000 days to show the effect of nodal precession due to interactions with binary stars. The size of the point scales with the line-of-sight distance, thus smaller points are behind the binary orbits. The red and blue regions show the crossing area of stellar disks of primary and secondary stars, accounting for the binary orbital motions. Transits can occur when the planet orbit and the stellar crossing area are intersected. The aspect ratio is 70:1. Due to the small mutual inclination of TOI-1338 b, the variation range of planetary inclination is very small, thus its orbit will always intersect the primary star’s orbital crossing region. The secondary star has a smaller radius, thus the stellar and planetary orbits are not mutually intersected, precluding potential transitability. -- astro-ph.EP

Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

Photo-dynamical Analysis of Circumbinary Multi-planet System TOI-1338: a Fully Coplanar Configuration with a Puffy Planet

by Keith CowingApril 30, 2024April 30, 2024

TOI-1338 is the first circumbinary planet system discovered by TESS. It has one transiting planet at P∼95 day and an outer non-transiting planet at P∼215 day complemented by RV observation.

ESPRESSO

A Sub-Earth Mass Planet Has Been Discovered Orbiting Barnard’s Star

Characterisation of TOI-406 as Showcase of the THIRSTEE program: A 2-Planet System Straddling the M-dwarf Density Gap

RISTRETTO: A VLT XAO Design To Reach Proxima Cen b In The Visible

Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço Paves The Way In The Field Of Exoclimatology

TOI-757 b: An Eccentric Transiting Mini-Neptune On Aa 17.5-d Orbit

Resonant Sub-Neptunes Are Puffier

HD 21520 b: A Warm Sub-Neptune Transiting A Bright G Dwarf

High-resolution Transmission Spectroscopy Of Warm Jupiters: An ESPRESSO Sample With Predictions For ANDES

Three Super-Earths And A Possible Water World From TESS And ESPRESSO

Photo-dynamical Analysis of Circumbinary Multi-planet System TOI-1338: a Fully Coplanar Configuration with a Puffy Planet

Juice Astrobiology Mission To Fly Past Earth For Third Gravity Assist

Planetary Health Check 2026 Finds Mounting Pressures Across Earth’s Life Support Systems – Reports And Proceedings

Prebiotic Peptide Formation Triggered By Urea-rich Warm Little Ponds On Early Earth

Thyles Rupes Region Of Mars

Do Himalayan-style Mountains Lie Under The Antarctic ice: Implication For The Gondwana Supermountains, The Rise Of Oxygen And The Cambrian Explosion?