event
Wednesday 04 Mar 2020: [Seminar] Looking for the transits of circumplanetary disks
Matthew Kenworthy - Leiden Observatory
4th floor, Physics building 14:00-15:00
In 2007, a 20 Myr old star (called J1407) in the Sco-Cen association underwent a series of complex eclipses that lasted almost two months but showed nightly variations of up to 50%. The best model for this eclipse is a giant ring system filling the Hill sphere of an undetected secondary companion that orbits around this star. This ring system is almost the size of Venus' orbit, and may be the first detection of a circumplanetary disk in transit which shows hints of exomoon formation.
Since December, a new star has started undergoing a complex eclipse similar to a CPD transit - I will show the latest results of our monitoring campaign from the past two months.
I discuss the search our group is undertaking for more circumplanetary disks and rings, the project bRing which was part of an international campaign searching for material in the Hill sphere of the gas giant planet Beta Pictoris b during its inferior conjunction in 2017 and 2018, and what can we learn by looking for more of these transiting systems in all sky surveys.
