Events in Physics
Niall Deacon (Hertfordshire)
Location: PS0.17a
Wide orbit exoplanets and planets in wide binaries
The study of planets around other stars has progressed to studying how environment affects planet occurrence. Close binarity suppresses the formation of planets, however there are no constraints on the effect of wider binarity. I will present a study showing that wide binaries in the original Kepler field have the same planet occurrence rate as single stars.
Planets are well studied at close separations with orbital periods out to a few years. High resolution direct imaging surveys are beginning to add new planets out to orbits of 100AU. However the population of planets beyond 1000AU is poorly studied. I will present the widest orbit planet yet known, found through a literature search. I will also outline future work to use the Spitzer Space Telescope to constrain the population of wide orbit exoplanets in the Solar Neighbourhood.