Séminaire IPAG

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Characterizing transiting exoplanets with ESPRESSO and NIRPS

jeudi 15 octobre 2026 - 11h00

Melissa Hobson - IPAG
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Over the past 30 years, more than 6000 exoplanets have been discovered, revealing a wide variety of populations. Exoplanets that can be characterized by both transit photometry and radial velocities are particularly valuable to understanding these populations, as knowing both their radii (from transits) and their masses (from radial velocities) allows us to compute their densities and thus gain an idea of their likely compositions. To exploit this, the radial velocity exoplanet surveys led by the ESPRESSO and NIRPS consortia both include transiting planet follow-up programs. These instruments have different strengths; while the optical ESPRESSO spectrograph at the VLT is vital to characterize even the smallest planets around FGK stars, the near-infrared NIRPS spectrograph on the 3.6m telescope at La Silla is uniquely suited to characterizing planets around late-type stars. In this seminar, I will present an overview of the population of planets around solar-type stars revealed by the completed ESPRESSO consortium transit follow-up survey, and some recent discoveries around M dwarfs from the ongoing NIRPS consortium transit follow-up survey.

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Salle Manuel Forestini, 414 rue de la piscine, 38400 Saint Martin d'Hères