A rocky planet transiting a nearby low-mass star

M-dwarf stars -- hydrogen-burning stars that are smaller than 60 per cent of the size of the Sun -- are the most common class of star in our Galaxy and outnumber Sun-like stars by a ratio of 12:1. Recent results have shown that M dwarfs host Earth-sized planets in great numbers: the average number of M-dwarf planets that are between 0.5 to 1.5 times the size of Earth is at least 1.4 per star. The nearest such planets known to transit their star are 39 parsecs away, too distant for detailed follow-up observations to measure the planetary masses or to study their atmospheres. Here we report observations of GJ 1132b, a planet with a size of 1.2 Earth radii that is transiting a small star 12 parsecs away. Our Doppler mass measurement of GJ 1132b yields a density consistent with an Earth-like bulk composition, similar to the compositions of the six known exoplanets with masses less than six times that of the Earth and precisely measured densities. Receiving 19 times more stellar radiation than the Earth, the planet is too hot to be habitable but is cool enough to support a substantial atmosphere, one that has probably been considerably depleted of hydrogen. Because the host star is nearby and only 21 per cent the radius of the Sun, existing and upcoming telescopes will be able to observe the composition and dynamics of the planetary atmosphere.Comment: Published in Nature on 12 November 2015, available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature15762. This is the authors' version of the manuscrip

A super-Earth transiting a nearby low-mass star

A decade ago, the detection of the first transiting extrasolar planet provided a direct constraint on its composition and opened the door to spectroscopic investigations of extrasolar planetary atmospheres. As such characterization studies are feasible only for transiting systems that are both nearby and for which the planet-to-star radius ratio is relatively large, nearby small stars have been surveyed intensively. Doppler studies and microlensing have uncovered a population of planets with minimum masses of 1.9-10 times the Earth's mass (M_Earth), called super-Earths. The first constraint on the bulk composition of this novel class of planets was afforded by CoRoT-7b, but the distance and size of its star preclude atmospheric studies in the foreseeable future. Here we report observations of the transiting planet GJ 1214b, which has a mass of 6.55 M_Earth and a radius 2.68 times Earth's radius (R_Earth), indicating that it is intermediate in stature between Earth and the ice giants of the Solar System. We find that the planetary mass and radius are consistent with a composition of primarily water enshrouded by a hydrogen-helium envelope that is only 0.05% of the mass of the planet. The atmosphere is probably escaping hydrodynamically, indicating that it has undergone significant evolution during its history. As the star is small and only 13 parsecs away, the planetary atmosphere is amenable to study with current observatories.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, published in Natur

The ultraviolet, optical, and infrared properties of Sloan Digital Sky Survey sources detected by GALEX

We discuss the ultraviolet, optical, and infrared properties of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) sources detected by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer ( GALEX) as part of its All-sky Imaging Survey Early Release Observations. Virtually all (> 99%) the GALEX sources in the overlap region are detected by SDSS; those without an SDSS counterpart within our 600 search radius are mostly unflagged GALEX artifacts. GALEX sources represent similar to 2.5% of all SDSS sources within these fields, and about half are optically unresolved. Most unresolved GALEX-SDSS sources are bright (r <18 mag), blue, turnoff, thick-disk stars and are typically detected only in the GALEX near-ultraviolet (NUV) band. The remaining unresolved sources include low-redshift quasars (z <2.2), white dwarfs, and white dwarf-M dwarf pairs, and these dominate the optically unresolved sources detected in both GALEX bands. Almost all the resolved SDSS sources detected by GALEX are fainter than the SDSS main spectroscopic limit. ( Conversely, of the SDSS galaxies in the main spectroscopic sample, about 40% are detected in at least one GALEX band.) These sources have colors consistent with those of blue ( spiral) galaxies (u - r <2.2), and most are detected in both GALEX bands. Measurements of their UV colors allow much more accurate and robust estimates of star formation history than are possible using only SDSS data. Indeed, galaxies with the most recent (less than or similar to 20 Myr) star formation can be robustly selected from the GALEX data by requiring that they be brighter in the far-ultraviolet (FUV) than in the NUV band. However, older starburst galaxies have UV colors similar to those of active galactic nuclei and thus cannot be selected unambiguously on the basis of GALEX fluxes alone. Additional information, such as spatially resolved FUV emission, optical morphology, or X-ray and radio data, is needed before blue GALEX colors can be unambiguously interpreted as a sign of recent star formation. With the aid of Two Micron All Sky Survey data, we construct and discuss median 10-band UV through infrared spectral energy distributions for turnoff stars, hot white dwarfs, low-redshift quasars, and spiral and elliptical galaxies. We point out the high degree of correlation between the UV color and the contribution of the UV flux to the UV through infrared flux of galaxies detected by GALEX; for example, this correlation can be used to predict the SDSS z-band measurement, using only two GALEX fluxes, with a scatter of only 0.7 mag

The muscles treasury survey. I. Motivation and overview

Ground- and space-based planet searches employing radial velocity techniques and transit photometry have detected thousands of planet-hosting stars in the Milky Way. With so many planets discovered, the next step toward identifying potentially habitable planets is atmospheric characterization. While the Sun–Earth system provides a good framework for understanding the atmospheric chemistry of Earth-like planets around solar-type stars, the observational and theoretical constraints on the atmospheres of rocky planets in the habitable zones (HZs) around low-mass stars (K and M dwarfs) are relatively few. The chemistry of these atmospheres is controlled by the shape and absolute flux of the stellar spectral energy distribution (SED), however, flux distributions of relatively inactive low-mass stars are poorly understood at present. To address this issue, we have executed a panchromatic (X-ray to mid-IR) study of the SEDs of 11 nearby planet-hosting stars, the Measurements of the Ultraviolet Spectral Characteristics of Low-mass Exoplanetary Systems (MUSCLES) Treasury Survey. The MUSCLES program consists visible observations from Hubble and ground-based observatories. Infrared and astrophysically inaccessible wavelengths (EUV and Lyα) are reconstructed using stellar model spectra to fill in gaps in the observational data. In this overview and the companion papers describing the MUSCLES survey, we show that energetic radiation (X-ray and ultraviolet) is present from magnetically active stellar atmospheres at all times for stars as late as M6. The emission line luminosities of C iv and Mg ii are strongly correlated with band-integrated luminosities and we present empirical relations that can be used to estimate broadband FUV and XUV (≡X-ray + EUV) fluxes from individual stellar emission line measurements. We find that while the slope of the SED, FUV/NUV, increases by approximately two orders of magnitude form early K to late M dwarfs (≈0.01–1), the absolute FUV and XUV flux levels at their corresponding HZ distances are constant to within factors of a few, spanning the range 10–70 erg cm−2 s−1 in the HZ. Despite the lack of strong stellar activity indicators in their optical spectra, several of the M dwarfs in our sample show spectacular UV flare emission in their light curves. We present an example with flare/quiescent ultraviolet flux ratios of the order of 100:1 where the transition region energy output during the flare is comparable to the total quiescent luminosity of the star Eflare(UV) ~ 0.3 L*Δt (Δt = 1 s). Finally, we interpret enhanced L(line)/LBol ratios for C iv and N v as tentative observational evidence for the interaction of planets with large planetary mass-to-orbital distance ratios (Mplan/aplan) with the transition regions of their host stars. </p