Exoplanets Rising: Astronomy and Planetary Science at the Crossroads

Coordinators: Adam Burrows, Kristen Menou

Note: This conference is now full. Thank you for your interest.

The discovery and study of Exoplanets has emerged in the last decade to be one of the most exciting new areas of astronomy and planetary science. Since 1992, more than 340 planets outside the solar system have been characterized. Collectively, they span a huge range of masses and orbital parameters and have led to major revisions in our ideas of how and where planets form.

Though, to date, much of the progress in exoplanet research has been made by astronomers, the expertise and accumulated wisdom in planetary science is vast. Therefore, the synthesis of its perspectives and knowledge with the new astronomical discoveries is in the mutual, long-term intellectual interest of both astronomy and planetary science.

The broad aims of this conference are:

  1. to summarize the current understanding of this very rapidly evolving, highly interdisciplinary field;
  2. to present the latest ideas, models, techniques, and observations;
  3. to foster the interaction and cross-fertilization of the planetary science and astronomical communities;
  4. to identify crucial objectives and problems that will enable the advancement of the field in the coming years; and
  5. to help midwife a coherent discipline of comparative planetology.

All aspects of Exoplanets, in particular their formation, evolution, structure, spectra, atmospheres, compositions, statistics, discovery, and measurement will be addressed.