IRES Track I: Planet-hunting Around the World with Students (PAWS)

Kutztown University, Kutztown PA

Investigators

Abstract

Part 1: This award supports international research experiences for twelve U.S. undergraduate students in astronomy from Kutztown University at the University of Southern Queensland in Australia. Both the home and host institutions perform follow-up observing for NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). TESS is tasked with the Level 1 Science Requirement of discovering and measuring the masses of 50 transiting small planets (less than 4 Earth radii), and it is expected to discover thousands of additional exoplanets in orbit around nearby, bright stars. The TESS mission relies on a dedicated network of ground-based follow-up observatories to identify false-positive signals, confirm planet radii and masses, and provide other planetary characterization measurements. The on-campus observatory at Kutztown University (KU) in Pennsylvania conducts such work as an active member of the TESS Follow-up Observing Program (TFOP) Working Group (WG). KU’s observatory is an on-campus educational research facility capable of detecting and measuring the sizes of large Jupiter-like exoplanets (already having co-discovered more than 10 new planets) and clearing smaller TESS planet candidates of false-positive signals. The foreign partner institution, the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) in Australia, is also an active member of the TFOP WG. USQ’s MINERVA-Australis observatory is a new world-class facility in a dark-sky location that provides TESS with some of the most accurate measurements of the masses of small planets. This project is designed to promote the progress of science by training the participating undergraduate students at KU, and then engaging them in 10-week research experiences at USQ. Furthermore, this activity will impact (1) national and international interests in exploration by increasing the number of known worlds beyond Earth, (2) the field of astrophysics by studying and characterizing these worlds, (3) scientific literacy by communicating these discoveries to the public and developing inquiry-based activities for local school students, (4) the economy by producing US citizens who are both globally engaged and more rigorously prepared for advanced study, research, and employment in physics- and space-related industries, (5) civil equality by making efforts to recruit qualified female and minority students (both underrepresented in the physical sciences), and (6) international relations by cultivating individual human connections between the citizens of multiple nations. Part 2: This project employs two basic astronomical observing techniques; photometry and spectroscopy. High-precision, seeing-limited photometry enables the measurement of an exoplanet’s size (radius) by detecting the small decrease in apparent brightness of the host star as the planet transits in front of it. Photometry is also a powerful tool for eliminating false-positives by detecting other nearby variable stars, such as eclipsing binaries (two stars orbiting each other), which are often culprits of these false-positive signals in the TESS data. The TESS field-of-view is very wide and therefore the light from multiple stars blends together, while the follow-up telescopes are much larger with narrower fields, permitting the direct measurement of individual stars’ brightness variations. High-resolution Doppler spectroscopy detects stellar radial velocity variations to measure the mass of an exoplanet, as the planet’s gravitational interaction with the host star causes the star to orbit (“wobble”) around the star-planet system’s center of mass. This project will contribute many valuable photometric observations and analyses during the participants’ training at KU, with high-precision radial velocity work being done during their involvement at USQ, thereby assisting the broader TESS mission in achieving its goals. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.