Special cases : moons, rings, comets, trojans; arXiv:1806.10032

Paper: Special cases: moons, rings, comets, trojans
Authors: Juan Cabrera, Maria Fernandez Jimenez, Antonio Garcia Munoz, Jean Schneider
Abstract: Non-planetary bodies provide valuable insight into our current under- standing of planetary formation and evolution. Although these objects are challeng- ing to detect and characterize, the potential information to be drawn from them has motivated various searches through a number of techniques. Here, we briefly review the current status in the search of moons, rings, comets, and trojans in exoplanet systems and suggest what future discoveries may occur in the near future. .

My Comment: Nice quick review - actually an (intro?) chapter for a larger review. Although posted to astro-ph today, the article is only current through mid 2017, and makes many references to the other chapters of the larger review series. Takeaway: we are in an era where smaller than planetary objects (rings, comets, moons, etc) may potentially be found around other star systems, but it is going to be a monumental task to cleanly separate an unambiguous signal of such from various systematics of the observations, and the fickleness of stars.

My Scrawling Notes:

The first polluted white dwarf from Gaia DR2: the cool DAZ GaiaJ1738−0826; arXiv:1806.09056

Paper: The first polluted white dwarf from Gaia DR2: the cool DAZ GaiaJ1738−0826
Authors: Carl Melis, B. Zuckerman, P. Dufour, I. Song, B. Klein
Abstract: We present the first metal-polluted single white dwarf star identified through Gaia DR2. GaiaJ1738-0826, selected from color and absolute magnitude cuts in the Gaia DR2 data, was discovered to have strong Ca~II absorption in initial spectroscopic characterization at Lick Observatory. Notably, GaiaJ1738-0826 resembles in many ways the first confirmed metal-polluted hydrogen atmosphere white dwarf, the DAZ G74-7.

My Comment: Really short article - mainly just an observation confirmation, but it makes use of GAIA DR2 to identify a candidate "weird" object, and then confirms what it is with follow-up observations, in this case spectra. I love this stuff, and wanted to grab a short GAIA DR2 paper to get started thinking about science that can be done with the data. Hint: it is a lot. Very a lot.

My Scrawling Notes:

The New Horizons Kuiper Belt Extended Mission - arXiv:1806.08393

Paper: The New Horizons Kuiper Belt Extended Mission 
Authors: S.A. Stern, H.A. Weaver, J.R. Spencer, H.A. Elliott, the New Horizons Team
Abstract: The central objective of the New Horizons prime mission was to make the first exploration of Pluto and its system of moons. Following that, New Horizons has been approved for its first extended mission, which has the objectives of extensively studying the Kuiper Belt environment, observing numerous Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) and Centaurs in unique ways, and making the first close flyby of the KBO 486958 2014 MU69. This review summarizes the objectives and plans for this approved mission extension, and briefly looks forward to potential objectives for subsequent extended missions by New Horizons.

My Comment: Two and a half days before closest encounter, the extended mission target 2014 MU69 will finally be 2 pixels on the LORRI instrument. That's um... rather quick!

My Scrawling Notes:

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Back again.

It has been a long time since I updated this dead blog, but I think that will change, at least for a little bit. To get back into the swing of professional astronomy again, instead of just job and home hunting, I’ve made a commitment to myself to read and take notes on one astro-ph article that comes out each day. Will I always succeed? No, but I’m going to make this a habit. To that end I’ll be posting links to some of the papers I look at, a favorite bit of the article, and my hand-scrawled notes to this blog. That favorite bit might not always be sciencey, it might just be a comment or stat that I found rather amusing or fun.

As I get back into this habit I hope to also get back to writing a bit of stuff for this blog, but for now this should at least get the ball rolling on my current plan.