Wobbling stars reveal hidden companions in Gaia data

Using data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission, and the Habitable Zone Planet Finder and NEID Spectrometers developed at Penn State, scientists, including Penn State astronomers, have found a huge exoplanet and a brown dwarf. This is the first time a planet has been uniquely discovered by Gaia’s ability to sense the gravitational tug or ‘wobble’ the planet induces on a star. Both the planet and brown dwarf are orbiting low-mass stars, a scenario thought to be extremely rare.

A full story about the research is available on the European Space Agency website.

The team included several current and former Penn State researchers, faculty members, and students:

Current:

• Suvrath Mahadevan, Verne M. Willaman Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics
• Evan Fitzmaurice, graduate student in astronomy and astrophysics
• Megan Delamer, graduate student in astronomy and astrophysics
• Rachel Fernandes, President's Postdoctoral Fellow in the Penn State Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
• Jessica Libby-Roberts, Center for Exoplanets Postdoctoral Fellow in the Penn State Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
• Jason Wright, professor of astronomy and astrophysics

Former:

• Gudmundur Stefansson, assistant professor in astrophysics at the University of Amsterdam, who earned a doctorate in astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State
• Shubham Kanodia, Carnegie Postdoctoral Fellow at Carnegie's Earth & Planets Lab in Washington DC, who earned a doctorate in astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State
• Caleb Cañas, NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow at NASA Goddard, who earned a doctorate in astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State
• Chad Bender, associate astronomer at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory, a former research associate in the Penn State Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
• Jiayin Dong, Flatiron Research Fellow, Center for Computational Astrophysics, Flatiron Institute – Simons Foundation, who earned a doctorate in astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State
• Samuel Halverson, scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab, Pasadena, who earned a doctorate in astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State
• Joe Ninan, reader at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India, a former assistant research professor in astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State
• Arpita Roy, senior program scientist at Schmidt Sciences, who earned a doctorate in astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State
• Christian Schwab, associate professor at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, a former NASA Sagan postdoctoral fellow in astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State