Uploaded March 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Emma Turtelboom is part of the 2025 NASA ExoExplorers cohort, a program that aims to enable the professional development of graduate students and/or postdocs in exoplanet research (“ExoExplorers”).
The ExoExplorers program, sponsored by NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration Program Office and the ExoPAG Executive Committee, will focus on the professional development of ~10 graduate student and/or postdoc researchers (“ExoExplorers”) at US and international institutions. Each member of the cohort will be featured in a webinar that will be live-streamed to the exoplanet community, helping to increase their visibility within the field and build internal and external research networks. The cohort will also learn from the experiences of established exoplanet researchers and engineers in the field (“ExoGuides”) via a combination of tailored presentations and small group discussions.
Abstract: Multi-planet system architectures are powerful tools to constrain the evolutionary pathways of observed exoplanets. Therefore, understanding the predictive and descriptive power of empirical models of system architectures is critical to probing system formation histories. In this work, we analyzed 52 TESS multi-planet systems previously studied using DYNAMITE (Dietrich & Apai, 2020), who used empirical models based on Kepler planets to predict additional planets in each system. We used additional TESS data to search for these predicted planets, and thereby evaluated the predictive power of the underlying empirical models. Specifically, we studied whether a period ratio method or clustered period model more accurately predicted additional planets. We found that neither model is highly predictive, highlighting the need for additional data and nuanced models to describe the full exoplanet population.
Emma Turtelboom is part of the 2025 NASA ExoExplorers cohort, a program that aims to enable the professional development of graduate students and/or postdocs in exoplanet research (“ExoExplorers”).
The ExoExplorers program, sponsored by NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration Program Office and the ExoPAG Executive Committee, will focus on the professional development of ~10 graduate student and/or postdoc researchers (“ExoExplorers”) at US and international institutions. Each member of the cohort will be featured in a webinar that will be live-streamed to the exoplanet community, helping to increase their visibility within the field and build internal and external research networks. The cohort will also learn from the experiences of established exoplanet researchers and engineers in the field (“ExoGuides”) via a combination of tailored presentations and small group discussions.
Abstract: Multi-planet system architectures are powerful tools to constrain the evolutionary pathways of observed exoplanets. Therefore, understanding the predictive and descriptive power of empirical models of system architectures is critical to probing system formation histories. In this work, we analyzed 52 TESS multi-planet systems previously studied using DYNAMITE (Dietrich & Apai, 2020), who used empirical models based on Kepler planets to predict additional planets in each system. We used additional TESS data to search for these predicted planets, and thereby evaluated the predictive power of the underlying empirical models. Specifically, we studied whether a period ratio method or clustered period model more accurately predicted additional planets. We found that neither model is highly predictive, highlighting the need for additional data and nuanced models to describe the full exoplanet population.
