Rutgers University Astrophysics Seminar
From Kepler to the Habitable Worlds Observatory: The Emerging Picture of Planet Populations
In this talk I will review the current state of and future prospects for exoplanet demographics. I will walk through the latest understanding of the frequency of Earth-like planets from Kepler, and their implications for NASA’s next flagship mission, the Habitable Worlds Observatory. I will present our new results from K2 and TESS, and outline how K2 and TESS are vitally expanding the stellar parameter space over which we can explore occurrence rates beyond Kepler. I will introduce a new mission concept called SHERA (Searching for Habitable Exoplanets with Relative Astrometry), designed to detect and measure the occurrence rate of small planets in the habitable zones of nearby binary star systems. Finally, I will highlight some of the pieces of the larger demographics puzzle - occurrence rate results from the other techniques that probe different stellar and exoplanet regimes - and outline the progress to be made working to join those pieces together.