Purpose of Discovering Exoplanet Features: To Participate in Exoplanet Science

Announcement of upcoming posts and scientific paper, where I will post and publish important features of the planet distribution. 

 I hope to start a pattern of posting results while working to a paper, rather than hiding intermediate results until everything comes out in a scientific paper. I invite others to collaborate with me on publishing these results: There are enough patterns in the exoplanet distribution for many first author papers. I will be posting new results on a spike in the distribution of multiple planets, new details of how the double-peak and gap feature previously posted about is actually two gaps separated by a small pileup, new ways of proving that the gap is real, new insights into the iron abundance-eccentricity correlation likely being valid at most periods, and I will show how the iron-poor spike feature relates to the rise and fall of eccentricities of orbits of iron-poor stars.

First, I am posting a rough statement of purpose: To challenge the science community to make certain that paths are available to junior scientists to continue in science and not be shut out. I challenge the science community to assist me in reversing being excluded from LCOGT photometry by reversing having presented as peer reviewed publications many papers that do not credit me being included on a single paper. This happened after LCOGT reneged on my appointment very early despite my excellent record of performance. I declare the claims that these papers have been peer reviewed to be false, based on the necessity of including all author-level contributors in the peer review process. By excluding my participation in the author review of these papers using false claims that I did not contribute intellectually, I have been left unable to obtain the employment necessary to reasonably participate in exoplanet astronomy, and have been wrongfully kept out of science as a result.

I show my results for which I am first finding so many features in the next few days for the purpose of showing that I the type of scientist that the science community must keep involved in science, by keeping me as a member of collaborations such as Kepler and TESS. I have sought to be in exoplanet research since 1992 but had struggled to change fields from nuclear physics to exoplanet research, so I was thrilled that at LCOGT to start our exoplanet research program in 2005 because it meant that I was fully involved in exoplanet research. I was doing the exoplanet transit observations to prepare to be a part of the Kepler project from the start of the Kepler mission. When my appointment was reneged on in 2007, I made it as clear as humanly possible that I was in no way willing to leave being a part of the LCOGT group preparing for Kepler. All supposed indications of me being willing to leave were made under extraordinary duress.

Due to my need to focus on the paper, the following is not yet polished:

I am doing my best to contribute to the new statement on ethics being created by the AAS to stress that ethical procedures must give recourse.

Purposes:

•         Participation in exoplanet research, which I have been seeking since 1992
•         Promote ethics requiring keeping the path open for every scientist and not blocking anyone.
•        Define peer review to necessarily include ``author peer review'', with no manipulation of author-list data allowed any more than manipulation of any other data.
•         Require standards of inclusion of contributing persons, by ending allowing moving contributors out of papers by keeping them from working, especially by hostile means including shutting down computer accounts and hampering communication with collaborators.
•        Expect all scientists and groups to support ``Going around ostracizing groups’’ by colleagues with better affiliations: All scientists must help if they find out that a collaborating organization has obstructed someone who has been one of its members from participating in the collaboration, by providing alternate access to data and communication. Data must not be accepted from subgroups from organizations keeping out someone who should be included as a member.
•        Reject denying credit by journals using fabricated excuses such as false claims that no intellectual contributions have been made, especially when fabrications include interrupting work to minimize further contributions and allowing no discussion of how contributions were intellectual work. Project planning is in fact intellectual work, even more so when doing support work of projects you have been heavily involved in planning.
•        Establish ethical guidelines that oppose territoriality especially when stealing others’ contributions by moving out good people.

I present my struggle to write the papers alone in the absence of these ethics. It has required that I start my learning over, having to learn the planet distribution without the benefit of having finished learning photometry in 2007. I wish it had been as easy as jumping to this new subject, but it took years of searching with false starts learning several new areas before I found this area. For presenting these distributions, I had to learn how to give the proof required to show these are real. I tried publishing these results on the double peak and gap in 2013, after trying to publish the eccentricity-iron abundance correlation, but without support or colleagues was unable to obtain the fully desired peer review. I am willing to show how this demonstrates that the science community cannot keep out someone who is due staying in the group. It would have been far better for these results to have been shared in my groups in 2013, instead it is 2016 and most scientists have never heard of these features.

I am presenting this as part of seeking collaborators to work on the planet distribution, as well as seeking support from those who should have been my collaborators doing photometry for putting me back on papers I did not want to be kept off of.

I seek to return to being a part of UCSB like every other LCOGT scientist, but seek support of my participation from institutions such as the University of Hawaii that are involved with the global network that is LCOGT but that have not been as complicit as UCSB in obstructing my participation. I am proud to have sought to have been a part of TESS and Kepler missions from their beginning, taking the chance long before missions started.

My passion really is: To do astronomy with other people. I have not wanted to make these discoveries alone.

Preview of results to be posted in next few days:

I give here a preview of my results being prepared to be published in a scientific paper, in an effort to attract collaborators given how I have been made to work alone even though I am a very social scientist. I have presented many of these features in many conferences, seeking out collaborators whenever possible. I am finding it hard for scientists to break out of the system and work with someone who does not have an institutional affiliation, but I am also finding it hard to fulfill all of the expectations of writing a scientific paper when I have not been given the same chance as astronomers in normal institutions to finish my appointment such that I can keep my relationships with collaborators after changing institutions. I use this preview presentation of some very important results to make an appeal to the astronomy community to help me find new ways to properly finish my appointment at LCOGT after that observatory reneged on finishing my appointment in a manner intentionally designed to make it difficult for me to continue as an astronomer. Here I explain my motivations in trying to stay in astronomy even after being declared persona non grata by LCOGT even though I had over 8 months left on my assignment at the telescope in Maui, Hawaii followed by an expected return to join the main group in California. I present these results in a campaign to attract other exoplanet astronomers to support me being their collaborator.

New Features in the Exoplanet Distribution:

I am now preparing to present features in both a scientific publication and on this blog, as part of my goal seeking group participation in finding and understanding exoplanets. I present a newly discovered feature, the spike in high eccentricity among multiple planets that tracks significantly with iron abundance. This is in addition to the spike in the iron-poor population of the full sample of RV planets.

Still to come are full defense of how these features are neither the result of random chance or from observational effects. Those are necessary for a scientific paper to be

approved by the peer review arranged by the scientific journal.

These are the features I will be presenting soon:

•  Double peak and gap in the distribution of iron-rich single-star sunlike star single-planet distribution
• Gap and longer period peak still present in the distribution of iron-rich single-star sunlike star multiple-planet distribution, but the shorter period peak is either moved or smaller if there at all.
• Two spikes in eccentricity, including the gradual spreading of the spike with iron-abundances gradually going above solar.
• Eccentricity metallicity correlation, including gradual change rather than just being two populations

I have found these features in the distribution of planets found by radial velocity (RV). In all figures, I show only ``objects'' found by RV, where I use ``object'' as a collective term for the parameters of planets, their stars, and their orbit. Unless I specific I am referring to more stars, I am commonly studying a selection (cut) of stars to be ``sunlike'' by having temperatures between 4500 and 6500 K, having a surface gravity acceleration of more than 10^4.0 cm/sec^2 which is written as ``log g>4.0,'' and also to not have a stellar companion. These temperature and gravity cuts are to remove stars further along in their evolutionary sequence. Binary stars often ``excite'' the eccentricity of planets, and indeed in 2013 I found that orbits of planets of stars with stellar companions do indeed have higher mean eccentricities than orbits of stars not to have found to have companions -- a result that evidences that observers have in fact done a good job of finding at least the larger stellar companions that are likely to make a difference. (I do not cut out low or high mass stars which I may do in the future because of how the long period peak of low mass stars is at a lower period). 

The distribution of periods of planets of single sunlike stars, with those of iron-rich stars shown in red (not filled) and those of iron-poor stars in blue (filled), shows a gap from periods of 494 to 923 days, with a deep gap of zero planets from 656 to 923 day periods.

Comparing this histogram of counting periods of all planets found by radial velocity (RV) shows that there are 67 periods in the wide gap and 31 in the deep gap. A comparison of the parameters of these ``objects'' (planets+stars+orbits) with the neighboring regions shows the chance that the gap is either random or observational to be less than one in a million.

This histogram of the single planet population, selected from the above population of sunlike single star planets, shows that the double peaks and gap are strong features of periods of ``loner'' planets that are not found to be in multiple planet systems. We further see that there is a shorter period gap of zero planets as well as the wider longer period gap. Separating these two gaps are just two planets in this distribution, but they align well with planets in the multiple period distribution suggesting that this pileup could be real rather than just that the small number of periods between the peaks are nearby.

This histogram of the multiple planet population, again selected from the above population of sunlike single star planets, shows that the longer period peak and the deep gap are strong features of periods of multiple planets, but the shorter period peak may not be. The shorter period gap and small pileup separating the two gaps may also be a feature of this pileup, but because it does not quite align with the bins, one member of that pileup falls in the bin of the more narrow gap. That one period is at the longer period edge of that bin. These bins were aligned to show the dramatic jump from zero planets in the gap to an abrupt long period peak.

My next blog post will be to present a new feature, the spike in high eccentricity among multiple planets in the 10 to 100 day period that tracks significantly with iron abundance. It is amazing how well the eccentricities of multiple planets in the 10 to 100 day period range track with iron abundance. This is in addition to the spike in the iron-poor population of the full sample of RV planets.

By causing me to struggle to write papers on the distribution alone, I was delayed learning how it is necessary give the proof required to show these are real. I published to the astro-ph arxiv prepreint server my results in 2013 but working alone was not able to write clearly enough on this new subject fully desired peer review. It is unreasonable for the community to expect to deny me sought after involvement with the community and then expect me while home alone to come up with a clearly written paper satisfying the statistical expectations that are normally desired. There is good reason for such discoveries to be supported by good writing, but the community must do better to not so badly handicap someone from being able to meet these standards. I am willing to make this a public example to show how this demonstrates that the science community cannot keep out someone who is due staying in the group. It would have been better for these results to have been shared in my groups in 2013, instead it is 2016 and most scientists have never heard of these features.

A new ``spike'' in eccentricity is presented in this plot of orbits of planets in multiple planet systems hosted by sunlike stars.  Not only are all five of the 20 objects in between periods of 10 and 100 days with eccentricities greater than 0.21 in a narrow period range, the iron abundances of the five as a group are much higher than the iron abundances of the fifteen stars having planets with orbits of 0.21 or less. Here, orbits of stars more iron abundant than the sun (``iron-rich'') are identified with red open circles, and orbits of stars with less iron abundances than the sun (``iron-poor'') are identified with blue filled circles. All five high eccentricity objects in the spike are iron-rich, but only seven of the fifteen low eccentricity objects are iron-rich.

The same plot as above but this time the boundary between iron rich and poor is set at 1.23 times the iron abundance of the sun, where 1.23 is from how the iron abundance is given as a logarithmic value, and the boundary here is 10^0.09=1.23. In astronomer's jargon, this is [Fe/H] = 0.09. Every single one of the 15 low eccentricity objects has iron below [Fe/H] = 0.09 (below 10^0.09), but only one of the 15 high eccentricity objects has less iron in the star.

I hope my results demonstrate how much better it would have been for the community to have helped me stay in the group. I hope that the community will help me be able to qualify for grants and employment to end my years of unemployment.

For orbits of sunlike single stars, this eccentricity as a function of period even looks to the eye that beyond the shortest periods, where orbits are circularized to lower eccentricities by tidal interaction with the star, that the eccentricities of orbits of stars more iron abundant than the sun (``iron-rich,'' red open circles) are higher at most all periods than the eccentricities of orbits of stars less iron abundant than the sun (` `iron-poor,'' blue filled circles). The exception may be in the region of the gap in counts of iron-rich orbits, from periods of 494 to 923 days. That region not only has low eccentricity orbits of iron-rich stars, it has small number of high eccentricity orbits of iron-poor stars that might not have a significant of objects here, were it not for how there are more such ``high eccentricity iron-poor objects'' in the larger population (where I use the term ``object'' to mean the parameters of the planet, star, and their orbit collectively).

Here, the eccentricities versus periods of all stars are shown there are seven orbits of iron-poor stars that have eccentricities of above 0.55, and six of these seven are within a narrow period range that corresponds to the shorter period side of the gap found above. Even the eccentricities of the orbits of iron-rich stars in this gap region (494 to 923 day periods) have lower eccentricities that outside this region. 

 

Here again the eccentricities versus periods of all stars are shown but the dividing iron-abundance has been raised to 10^0.1 or 1.26 times that of the sun, which is written as [Fe/H]=0.1. The way that this spike widens to include more nearby shorter period stars adds evidence that this spike is real feature that changes gradually, In fact, it can start to be seen that there is a gradual change in eccentricity with iron abundance at most periods shorter than this spike (shorter than 500 days). That is, there are not really two distinct populations of iron-poor and rich stars that suddenly change. At longer periods, the story may be more complicated, but at the longest periods there does appear likely to be higher eccentricity orbits of more iron-rich stars but further work and possibly more data are needed to be sure.

I briefly mention what the recourse must be in cases where someone is bullied out of a group: That organization must enable the wrongly expelled scientist to have both a separate position of safety combined with the option of returning to the original group. Victims must be given two affiliations, with the cost of supporting two affiliations being an appropriate deterrent to organizations bullying people out of being a group member. I challenge the science community to support this requirement by including it in rules for eligibility for government grants. Until this reasonable requirement is established, collaborators must make it possible for ostracized scientists to not be ostracized from their larger collaborations as well, by providing data access and communication that go around the barriers that a bullying organization such as LCOGT might create to keep out randomly undesired scientists.

Conclusions

My expectation is that scientists can to participate such that they can finish they work, and that they cannot be randomly stopped by superiors without good reason. I insist that the community make it possible for me to continue contributing and learning from where I unwillingly left off. I just wanted to keep doing science. Let's work together. Stop keeping me out, and let me back in. 

I challenge the science community: Make participation possible!

Appendices to post.

I apologize that this post is a bit rough and will need to be revised, but I must get back to writing the exoplanet distribution paper.

Appendix to post: Comments explaining why ``peer review’’ must be defined to include the review of all relevant scientists, and comments on having previously issued a public request for astronomers to ``Go around the observatory’’ by enabling me to be a part of group research by setting up alternate access to LCOGT data and communication with groups to get around LCOGT ostracizing me:

I am proud of starting a program that has delivered our data towards confirmation of many planets. I hope that it is worth having these papers published with the full peer review of all the contributing authors that they publish the first complete-author versions of these papers with me, rather than trying to pass off as peer reviewed the versions printed without the first astronomer actually at the LCOGT telescopes. I ask that they support the expectation of every astronomer who goes to work at the telescope for a project that the astronomer will have full opportunity to participate in the intellectual use of that data, and that no paper be called ``published’’ until the group of authors give full chance to intellectual participate to every contributor who does everything possible to stay involved. I hope that my intellectual work on the distribution puts an end to the question of whether I have been intellectually involve in these works. I expect the science community to require these authors to stop keeping me out by saying that those papers that I have been kept off of cannot be considered to be peer reviewed papers until they are resubmitted with consultation with me. This would be my first chance to finish my intellectual contributions to them. I look forward to joining my co-author colleagues in publishing the first LCOGT papers that can confidently be said to have been fully peer reviewed. In 2013, I posted on the astro-ph “arxiv” pre-print service my request to collaborators to help me “Go around the observatory” (http://arxiv.org/pdf/1309.3283.pdf ). I ask that all collaborators of LCOGT recognize that LCOGT has been keeping me out of having any papers come from my hard work contributing to LCOGT, including contributing to the intellectual work of project planning. I ask these collaborators to arrange with me how I can participate in group papers to make sure that they are not part of using anyone’s work without letting them have a chance to work with the group.

Not making someone miss out on science

I feel bad to miss everyone's talks and posters at the IAU conference because I had to stand outside the door for two weeks, but I thank everyone who came to see my presentation on the double peaks and a new gap in the periods of planets that depend so much on iron abundance. I have come every day for two weeks to join in a conference with my colleagues, only to be kept out because being completely unemployed I don't even have my own money to pay for the registration fee.

The bigger issue is that science community must develop procedures collaborating groups to bring back into the group someone who has been randomly kept out by their organization. I have been kept “out the door” not just from one observatory but also from the larger collaborations such as Kepler that I had worked so hard to prepare LCOGT to join. Groups must not tolerate having authors keeping out someone because their organization lacks internal protections. I published my request for groups to “Go around the observatory” (http://arxiv.org/pdf/1309.3283.pdf). Paper authors should either find an alternative way to bring in someone being ostracized by another author or require that author to not ostracize any important contributors. Papers must not be considered to have undergone peer review if someone with a significant part has been kept out. Ethics statements that say all those who have contributed “intellectually” must be amended to disallow using not talking to or sharing data with a target of ostracism to contrive claims that an unwanted person has not contributed “intellectually.” I challenge the credibility of papers where author participation has been contrived to keep me from continuing my contributions.

I have been literally outside the door from writing papers just as much as I have been kept standing outside the door of the IAU conference with no way, not even using my own salary, to pay the registration fee. This has been because of being kept out of doing the science I planned for our LCOGT group to do.

By standing outside, I have demonstrated the importance of requiring procedures that protect inclusivity. I am showing the importance of being able to question keeping people out, and my disappointment at being pressured to cover up and not challenge the authority of those who stopped me from finishing LCOGT photometry.

I participated the best I could in the IAU conference just as I have tried hard to not be stopped from working with the groups I helped LCOGT join. I hope to start a discussion on not being a part of keeping someone out, even if that someone has been a part of another institution.

It is awkward to be inclusive when one author does not want to include another person, but being inclusive means not going along with keeping someone else out. This includes bringing in someone that another author's organization wants kept out.

Follow my job search: Do I get inside or am I left giving my presentation outside the door?

I invite you to follow my job search in astronomy.

This week, you can follow: Do I get inside the conference, or am I left holding signs begging at the door? More important, do I get to join the research groups that produce the papers needed to get a job in science?

After the conference, follow me on whether I get to join writing the papers that I have been kept out from doing. Follow whether I get to join the collaborations that have not let me in due to LCOGT keeping me out, starting with TESS and Kepler.

I am taking my Campaign for Participation to twitter, where I hope you will retweet me. I'm in my 7th of being kept out, but being outside the door represents being kept out of not just LCOGT, but kept out of the collaborations with groups like Kepler, TESS, and the Palomar Transient Factory that I was the first astronomer at LCOGT to prepare our observatory to join.

In order to get another job, I need papers, and for papers, I need collaborators to “Go around the observatory” and bring me into groups writing papers that I was poised to join when LCOGT unexpectedly forced me to leave after seeing signs of me having a disability. I have been asking Kepler, TESS, and other groups to give me the chance I have been working hard for. (I do thank WASP for starting to work with me in 2010 based on that I had contributed to LCOGT data that it was not sharing with me, but I feel Kepler and TESS should bring me “inside the door” just like WASP was willing to.) True, I now have more expertise on planet distributions than from the photometry work I had been doing with LCOGT since 2005 since LCOGT gives global telescope data to these groups before allowing me, the first astronomer actually working at LCOGT telescopes, to see it.

The greatest victory from a paper, though, is getting one from the project I have done all by myself – though I would like collaborating co-authors. Currently, that is getting a paper done on planet distributions. I've tried several times to publish in this new area that I have tried to develop as a replacement to doing the photometry I was doing in LCOGT, but starting over in a new area home alone with no support has really been tough. Being thrown out is extremely disabling to anyone's concentration, and not being allowed to stay with the same research has disrupted my concentration worse. So I am grateful for all the encouragement people can give.

I am still looking for trip sponsors using crowdfunding by asking people to share this blog with this new "Let me inside" URL shortener to my Indiegogo crowdfunding:  http://tinyurl.com/letmeinside .

I hope that I am not kept outside for the last two days of the conference – but whether I get in or kept out, I will show you the pictures!

Is the IAU registration fee too expensive?

Standing outside the conference door holding my poster and talking to people as they go in, I am getting a lot of praise for, without intending to, making a statement on the price of the registration fee. Paying $700 is hard even for people with grants, so I will start the discussion: Isn't there a way to have a conference without such high fees? Do we really need to have this fancy of a convention center? Even if we need a really big convention center for a few functions, do we really need it for so many days? 

This was not the statement that I had intended by standing outside, but I am glad if so many support me "begging for donations" as statement that this conference is too expensive. Still, I am very sad to have to miss all of your talks, even if you do get to see my presentation outside. 

So if you did not come to this site through the Facebook Astronomers page, please look through my other posts to find my "Let me inside" crowdfunding link, and then share it. I've removed the link from just this post because that page does not allow solicitations. But I suppose I can mention in this post that I am trying crowdfunding, not at a significant level from astronomers, but in hopes that my friends and colleagues can help me find larger sources of support.

What about holding most of the big meeting in schools rented throughout a city? Surely there are less expensive venues. If such venues are not now readily available, could scientists advertise that we are really looking for cities to find more reasonable ways to hold large scientific meetings. Many also comment on the expense of hotels in Honolulu, saying there is not a good choice of lower cost hotels. Perhaps some lower priced cities could see this as a way to get more business.

I suspect that the Hawaii Convention Center (HCC) does not want this brought up. I wonder if the AAS does not want this brought up. It is a beautiful building but it is a big expensive building that if you look at its schedule, it is not used much. I'm told that some Hawai'i taxpayers are upset about the use of so much state money being used to build it. 

I have a volunteer who I discussed this with on video -- please pardon that the interview got broken into two pieces:
Here on YouTube: Fees too high video, part 1 of 2  Fees too high video, part 2 of 2

Let's have a discussion on the cost of conferences and what might be done. 

Reason to get into conference: Join the collaborations everyone else did, and job searching.

Whether I get into the conference or not, I can use my place out in front to promote my job search. I want it to be a job search that everyone watches, because unless my job search is well known, there is no way to overcome that I was kept from getting a good record of finishing the important research I started at LCOGT.

So I made new flyers today to emphasize both helping me with my job search but also helping me get back into joining the groups such as TESS and Kepler that the others at LCOGT had the chance to join, but that the first astronomer was kept out by LCOGT keeping me from accessing our data and stopping talking with me. The Science Director effectively told me to leave trying to enter exoplanet astronomy. So now with good results on exoplanet distributions, I am challenging being kept out of working with these groups.

I now have a more memorable “redirect” link to my long Indiegogo crowdfunding site to get me funded to go inside the IAU conference: http://tinyurl.com/letmeinside . “Let Me Inside” is easy enough to remember, as long as people can also remember tinyurl. I also have a new link for this blog: http://tinyurl.com/letmeparticipate drives home the point that I was working for many years to be a part of the Kepler to TESS program, and also sought out other groups as well, so I am due the same chance as everyone else that provided LCOGT photometry to Kepler and TESS papers. The message to TESS and Kepler is that the LCOGT work that Tim Brown and those under him claimed to provide also came from Stuart F. Taylor, and the *only* reason I was not sending it them with Tim Brown and postdocs was that Tim Brown was hiding the data from me. I was the one who had worked on the FTN telescope the longest, so normal scientific practice was for him to share LCOGT data with me. TESS and Kepler can find another way for me to contribute if they're uncomfortable asking LCOGT why they're keeping out their first astronomer, but all of the other groups should not simply follow LCOGT's black list.

Why am I seeking to have my job search watched online? It has been because I was put into having to make a lose-lose decision when applying for jobs: say nothing and let people think I didn't finish on my own, or explain that the observatory created a situation that made it impossible for me to finish. Both choices have not worked, so it's better to beg for social media attention to get many people watching whether the astronomy community will support me having a reasonable chance at being employed again.

I have missed the experience of working with the groups that I persuaded the Director of LCOGT that his new observatory should work with. I had discussed openly with him that I was new to exoplanet photometry, so he knew that since I had done other projects in the past, that I did not have a previous photometry job to fall back on when he took away my participation in photometry.

So this is why I am stuck outside the meeting doing an "outside the door" poster presentation: without papers has meant being without a job which has meant I have had no way to support paying the costs of an astronomy meeting. Now I hope that having a job search that is more public, that when collaborating groups of LCOGT write papers, they will be encouraged to keep no one out.

Coming blog posts:

- Feedback from attendees that the conference is much too expensive -- including a video from an attendee.

- The anti-TMT "protectors" had what I would say was their first day that they interacted with astronomers, since the Convention Center security kept them away from the front of the Center (I don't know how the Center could keep them off public property).

- The Convention Center tried to stop me from handing out flyers "without a permit." Not even a business card. They do not understand freedom of speech on public property means people can hand out information. That is unbelievable. They can call the police on someone handing out flyers, but it will make them look bad. I'm looking for reporters to record them try to stop flyers. I've researched this point, and it turns out that Honolulu has a history of previously stopping passing out of "handbills," but they have lost cases in court, so now citizens are free to exercise their freedom of speech to hand out flyers.

Let me inside!

Link to crowdfunding site on Indiegogo now has a shorter redirect:  http://tinyurl.com/letmeinside

Outdoor Poster Presentation

I am now showing giving the "Outdoor Poster Presentation" with my full science poster printed and laminated so I can carry it. Here is the slightly updated printed version:

Missing Planets! The Participation Gap

Credit to a conference attendee

For Day 2, I started the “Outside Session” of science talks not let inside. The outside poster session, where I put the highlight of my approved poster in my sign: There are missing planets of iron-rich stars at distances that have periods of 653 to 923 days. Clear out the trash, and there are no planets there that are not going around iron-poor stars! Zero! None! Yes, of course, since there are only less than 100 iron-rich planets that I am looking at, a few will probably be found, but I show that the distribution of a double peak separated by this deep gap is better than one in a thousand confidence of being real. What's “the trash” I swept under the rug here? Any planet whose star has another star as a companion, to start with. I am not the only one to have shown that the planets of binary stars are distributed differently: I find them more mixed, showing some but not other patters. I also threw out stars that have too low of gravity, usually because they're old and getting fat, I mean, their radii are getting larger. I also restrict the temperature range to stars not too different from the sun.

I am looking a little at the other stars, the “trash”, and am already seeing them to be “one (wo)man's trans is another's treasure.” In 2013 I found an exception to the newly discovered trend of higher eccentricity among planets hosted by iron-rich stars.

It was my 2012/2013 discovery of that “eccentricity-iron” correlation, also found independently (at close to the same time) by two others (Dawson and Murray-Clay, 2013), that shifted me to study patterns in planets at all periods. Before then, I have been primarily paying attention to the populations of planets closest to the star, following the line of looking at planets going into stars, or “planet destruction.”

Now, I will go pick up a laminated version of my poster, to continue my “outside poster session.” Laminated, because a typhoon is coming, and yes I will present my poster in the rain!

Cheer me on, and please share this blog with as many friends as you can!

Astronomers: If you see me, can we take pictures together? Thanks to all those who have taken pictures!