Department of Physics
Research, teaching and outreach in Physics at UW–Madison

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Special Astronomy Colloquium Talk
The Transiting Extrasolar Planets - A vehicle to learn new features about extrasolar systems
Date: Tuesday, September 14th
Time: 3:30 pm - 5:00 pm
Place: 4421 Sterling Hall Same Location
Speaker: Tsevi Mazeh, Tel Aviv University
Abstract: About 100 of the known extrasolar planets eclipse their parent star once every orbital period. The detection of these transiting planets in the last few years allowed the derivation of the planetary masses and radii, some of the parent star obliquity and sometimes even the planetary temperatures and atmospherical features. The talk will review the detection and study of the presently known transiting planets, and will point out how the new systems are different from our own solar system.

The new era of studying transiting planets from space by CoRoT and Kepler allows detection of minute modulations, with amplitudes of the order of 10's ppm (parts per million). I will discuss a recent detection of the ellipsoidal and the relativistic beaming effects in the lightcurve of CoRoT-3.
Host: Robert Mathieu
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