Robbins
Lecture: Self-calibration, systematic errors, and exoplanet discovery.
David W. Hogg (NYU)
Finding exoplanets
is hard: They appear as extremely tiny signals in any data set.
Intrinsic stellar
variability and variability induced by the spacecraft (or telescope or
atmosphere)
are both larger (in almost all data
sets) than the exoplanet signals of interest.
The best
information about these sources of variability comes from the scientific data
themselves;
that is, the most sensitive searches
for exoplanets are self-calibrated.
I use Kepler and K2
data to illustrate these points, showing a set of discoveries in the K2
mission,
where the spacecraft-induced
variability is larger than most exoplanet signals by more than
an order of magnitude. (Come
prepared to suffer through some linear algebra.)