Jason Wright (PSU) : Exoplanets Abound at Penn State

I will discuss a selection of exoplanet work we have done at Penn State using the High Resolution Spectrograph at the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, including the disproving a planet orbiting a "hot subdwarf," resolving Kepler-16 into a double-lined spectroscopic binary, and the discovery a Jupiter analog orbiting a nearby star in a multiplanet system. I will also discuss the extraordinary hot Jupiter MARVELS-1 c, which is in a 3:1 resonance with a brown dwarf, exhibits ~10-hour transit timing variations, and challenges all planet formation models... or will I? I will show the extensive false positive analysis we subjected this system to, and present some conclusions on the value of a "healthy paranoia" in science. I will also discuss our progress in improving the velocity precision of the HET/HRS in light of the upgrades to the system planned for 2013, including our work on understanding Fourier Transform Spectrograph scans of the iodine cell, our current error budget for the system, and our plans for the spectrograph once it comes back online. Finally, I will give a "behind the scenes" tour of exoplanets.org, including planned back-end upgrades and improvements and new features on the website.