Ground Based Transit Spectroscopy of ExtraSolar Planets

The study of extrasolar planets now proceeds via a wide range of techniques, including radial velocity monitoring, microlensing, direct imaging with adaptive optics, and transit monitoring. This latter technique has an additional advantage in that it provides a measurement of the physical size of the planet, by virtue of the magnitude of the drop in flux when the planet passes in front of the star.

Our present day project in this regard is being led by Ian again, to follow up potential planetary systems unearthed by the K2 mission, using the resurrected Kepler satellite. We intend to use the Keck telescope to image candidate planet systems to validate those most interesting for further follow-up. The first exciting results from this project can be found here .