Caltech/IPAC Lunch Seminar

Due to the comparatively cheap instrumentation and modest technological challenges, transiting exoplanet surveys provide an efficient means to generate large samples of exoplanets, and are, in fact, responsible for detecting the majority of known, confirmed exoplanets. However, the transit method may be too efficient, as even modest telescopes can produce planet candidates that are too faint or small for modern observing facilities to confirm their status as bonafide planets or facilitate more detailed characterization. In this talk, I will discuss the ramifications of interpreting candidates from such surveys, strategies for mitigating false positive rates, and motivate why pushing for larger samples is necessary, e.g., for testing fundamental tenants of habitability such as the runaway greenhouse hypothesis. Finally, I will present NITE: the Near-Infrared Transit Explorer, a mission concept capable of producing hundreds of transiting habitable zone planet detections and potentially place the first observational constraints on the runaway greenhouse limit.