SPIRou and TESS discover and characterize sub-Neptunes orbiting nearby red dwarfs. Since the discovery in 1995 of a planet in orbit around a star other than the Sun, research in exoplanetology has revolutionized our knowledge of planetary systems. Among the thousands of systems known today, many have planets that have no equivalent in our Solar […]
The atmosphere of the giant exoplanet Tau Boo b was investigated with SPIRou. Using the SPIRou spectropolarimeter on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) in Hawaii, a team gathering core SPIRou scientists led by Stefan Pelletier, PhD student at Université de Montréal, studied the atmosphere of the gas giant exoplanet Tau Boo b, a scorching hot world that […]
For the very first time, the mass and density of a very young planet are reliably characterized. SPIRou, the new spectropolarimeter / high-precision velocimeter recently installed on the 3.6m Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT), allowed to measure the mass and density of a close-in Neptune-like planet orbiting the hugely-active newborn star AU Microscopii (AU Mic), and to […]
Unveiling the birth of stars and their planets with SPIRou For the last 20 years the giant planets known as hot Jupiters have presented astronomers with a puzzle. How did they settle into orbits 100 times closer to their host stars than our own Jupiter is to the Sun ? An international team led by […]
New results suggest that SPIRou will boost our understanding of planet formation Although first detected 20 years ago, hot Jupiters are still enigmatic bodies. These celestial objects are giant Jupiter-like exoplanets that orbit 20 times closer to their host stars than the Earth does to the Sun. Using the ESPaDOnS spectro-polarimeter on the 3.6m Canada-France-Hawaii […]