Size of new planets found

[clsmeeks]

I am new to this so please don't bet me up over this question. I am wondering if anyone has any information, on the size of planets that are being found by planet hunters. Are large gas giants like jupiter apt to be closer in to larger suns or still farther out like jupiter is in our solar system. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Jazman1985]

http://kepler.nasa.gov/

link to a planet hunting scope, when it's done it should have found 1000's of new planets. Kepler will find planets closest to their suns at first, due to the small time required to observe a transit. Later on, it should be able to detect planets farther out, towards a 1 year orbit, it requires at least 2-3 years to determine a planets orbit at this distance from the star. Right now, it has detected Kepler 7b(among a few others that have been confirmed), http://kepler.nasa.gov/Mission/discoveries/kepler7b/ , which is the smallest discovered.

 

[MeteorWayne]

I am new to this so please don't bet me up over this question. I am wondering if anyone has any information, on the size of planets that are being found by planet hunters. Are large gas giants like jupiter apt to be closer in to larger suns or still farther out like jupiter is in our solar system. Any help would be appreciated.

This is the most comprehensive and up to date list I have found (Current count is up to 455 now)


http://exoplanet.eu/catalog.php

If you click on each type (such as All candidates detected, or the subsets by method), you will get:

PLANET
Mass (MJup) - stats
Radius (RJup) - stats
PERIOD (days) - stats
SEMI-MAJOR AXIS (AU) - stats
ECCENTRICITY.
INCLINATION. (deg) - stats
STATUS
DISCOV. (year)
UPDATE

Wayne

PS, Welcome to Space.com!!

 

[clsmeeks]

thanks for the table MeteorWayne It looks like the larger the star that Jupiter type planets do tend to be closer in than in our solar system. I just had a theory that once nucluer fusion is started from a proto planetary disc that make larger stars seem to have large gas giants closer in to there suns. I was just wondering if it is due to the elements used by star creation uses up the other elements that would create smaller earth like planets. Again remember I'm just a novice. Again thanks for your help :?

 

[SpaceTas]

Most of the planets found so far have been discovered with either the radial velocity or transit method. Both these methods have a strong bias toward finding massive (RV) or large (transit) planets close in to their host star. So any trends in the data need to be treated with a big grain of salt. Ideally the statistical effects of the bias should be taken into account.

One trend that does seem to be holding up: stars with more metals (elements higher atomic mass than Helium) tend to have more planets than low metalicity stars. But the strength and exact causes of this trend are debated.

Types of planets:
Jupiters 100+ Earth masses (1/3 Jupiter mass) up to about 20 Jupiter mass (Brown dwarf limit)
Saturns about 20 Earth mass to about 100 Earth Mass
Neptunes (gaseous) about 10 to about 20 Earth mass
Super Earth 3 to about 12 Earth mass (rocky, icy, water)
Earth like 1/2 to 3 Earth mass (rocky, ice/water)

Hot Jupiters etc: Jupiters etc close in to their host with high (eg 1000 K) surface temperatures. Many in Mercury sized orbits. About half are in eccentric (elongated) orbits (e or ecc values 0 to 1 in tables)
Cold Jupiters etc: planets beyond the "snow line". The snow line is the distance at which water will be ice. In our solar system roughly in the asteroid belt.

 

[clsmeeks]

Most of the planets found so far have been discovered with either the radial velocity or transit method. Both these methods have a strong bias toward finding massive (RV) or large (transit) planets close in to their host star. So any trends in the data need to be treated with a big grain of salt. Ideally the statistical effects of the bias should be taken into account.

One trend that does seem to be holding up: stars with more metals (elements higher atomic mass than Helium) tend to have more planets than low metalicity stars. But the strength and exact causes of this trend are debated.

Types of planets:
Jupiters 100+ Earth masses (1/3 Jupiter mass) up to about 20 Jupiter mass (Brown dwarf limit)
Saturns about 20 Earth mass to about 100 Earth Mass
Neptunes (gaseous) about 10 to about 20 Earth mass
Super Earth 3 to about 12 Earth mass (rocky, icy, water)
Earth like 1/2 to 3 Earth mass (rocky, ice/water)

Hot Jupiters etc: Jupiters etc close in to their host with high (eg 1000 K) surface temperatures. Many in Mercury sized orbits. About half are in eccentric (elongated) orbits (e or ecc values 0 to 1 in tables)
Cold Jupiters etc: planets beyond the "snow line". The snow line is the distance at which water will be ice. In our solar system roughly in the asteroid belt.

In that case our these planets going to last or they in early stages of development, or is due to the elements around the star. I thought that rocky planets formed closer in to there suns that are within the snow line. Any more info or insight would be greatly appreciated.

 

[neilsox]

One theory is most solar systems started out like ours and didn't change much except the first million years. We rarely find these as our methods are not sensitive enough. Some of the large gas giant planets migrated inward and likely swept up the Earth like planets as they moved inward. These are much easier to find. Neil

 

[SpaceTas]

to clsmeeks

the leading theory is that the Hot Jupiters formed beyond the snow line and migrated in; via interactions inside the accretion disk. Tidal interactions between the planet and star or other planets can then move the planet in/out. At this point the maths gets horrendous and it's an active area of research. There is debate about wether planets can actually "spiral" into the star, or there is some minimum distance.

There are least 2-3 examples where the planet is close enough, hot enough and tides strong enough that the hot jupiter is losing its mass, and would eventually be either evaporated completely or stripped to it's solid core (eg Corot 7b may be such a case)