Joint Astrophysics Colloquium

Small Stars with Small Planets and Big Consequences

Philip Muirhead

Boston University

The field of extrasolar planets is rapidly evolving. The quest to discover ever more and ever smaller exoplanets has pushed the field in two primary directions: 1) toward a comprehensive assessment of the frequency and statistics of various types of exoplanets — used to constrain planet formation and evolution theories — and 2) toward characterizing the composition, atmosphere and evolution of individual exoplanets as though they were planets in our own Solar System. I will discuss the importance of low-mass stars in this context, emphasizing the phenomenal results from the NASA's Kepler Mission, and our efforts to characterize individual terrestrial exoplanets orbiting low-mass stars with existing and novel ground-based instrumentation.