Eric Agol

About

Eric Agol is a professor in the Department of Astronomy with a research focus on exoplanets, including their detection, habitability, and biosignatures. He has created widely used modeling code for transits of extrasolar planets and helped originate the idea of detecting and characterizing planets through transit time variations. Agol is a former member of the Kepler team, where he led the discovery and characterization of Kepler's first potentially rocky exoplanet within the habitable zone (Kepler 62f), as well as a super-Earth and mini-Neptune (Kepler 36). He has contributed to the characterization of circumbinary planet systems, including the first two-planet system orbiting a binary star (Kepler 38 and 47), and has postulated the possibility of long-lived habitable planets around white dwarf stars. His interests extend to atmospheric modeling of hot Jupiters, coronagraphic imaging, radial velocity surveys, and mapping of extrasolar planets using their time-dependent variations. Agol has also helped characterize Earth-sized transiting exoplanets in the TRAPPIST-1 system, contributing significantly to the field of exoplanet research.

Research topics

• Astrophysics
• Physics
• Astronomy
• Astrobiology
• Meteorology
• Chemistry

Selected publications

• Refining the Transit-timing and Photometric Analysis of TRAPPIST-1: Masses, Radii, Densities, Dynamics, and Ephemerides

  The Planetary Science Journal · 2021 · 317 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract We have collected transit times for the TRAPPIST-1 system with the Spitzer Space Telescope over four years. We add to these ground-based, HST, and K2 transit-time measurements, and revisit an N -body dynamical analysis of the seven-planet system using our complete set of times from which we refine the mass ratios of the planets to the star. We next carry out a photodynamical analysis of the Spitzer light curves to derive the density of the host star and the planet densities. We find tha…

  DOI

• No thick carbon dioxide atmosphere on the rocky exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 c

  Nature · 2023 · 197 citations

  -rich atmosphere on TRAPPIST-1 c suggests a relatively volatile-poor formation history, with less than [Formula: see text] Earth oceans of water. If all planets in the system formed in the same way, this would indicate a limited reservoir of volatiles for the potentially habitable planets in the system.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• ARCES Observations of the TESS Circumbinary Planet TIC 172900988b

  The Astronomical Journal · 2021 · 55 citations

  Abstract: Kostov et al. (2021) report the discovery of the first transiting circumbinary planet, detected from a single sector of TESS data. ARCES observations played a role in helping to establish the parameters of the system. We briefly present an overview of this interesting planetary system and then discuss the challenges encountered in analyzing ARCES data to derive accurate radial velocities for this project.

  DOI

• A roadmap for the atmospheric characterization of terrestrial exoplanets with JWST

  Nature Astronomy · 2024-07-15 · 35 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Multiple Patchy Cloud Layers in the Planetary-mass Object SIMP 0136+0933

  The Astrophysical Journal · 2024-04-01 · 17 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Multiwavelength photometry of brown dwarfs and planetary-mass objects provides insight into their atmospheres and cloud layers. We present near-simultaneous J - and K s -band multiwavelength observations of the highly variable T2.5 planetary-mass object, SIMP J013656.5+093347. We reanalyze observations acquired over a single night in 2015 using a recently developed data reduction pipeline. For the first time, we detect a phase shift between J - and K s -band light curves, which we measu…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: Masses and architectures of (potentially habitable) exoplanet systems

  NSF · $347k · 2016–2020

• CAREER: Prospecting for planets

  NSF · $791k · 2007–2014

• CDS&E: Development of fast, multi-dimensional Gaussian Processes for Exoplanet discovery and beyond

  NSF · $471k · 2019–2024

Frequent coauthors

• Émeline Bolmont

  University of Geneva

  83 shared

• Franck Selsis

  Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

  82 shared

• Drake Deming

  81 shared

• Rodrigo Luger

  Flatiron Institute

  77 shared

• Nicolas B. Cowan

  76 shared

• Elsa Ducrot

  Astrophysique, Instrumentation et Modélisation

  75 shared

• S. Hoyer

  73 shared

• Jonathan J. Fortney

  University of California, Santa Cruz

  66 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Astronomy

  University of California, Berkeley

  1998

• M.S., Astronomy

  University of California, Berkeley

  1995

• B.S., Physics

  University of California, Los Angeles

  1992

Similar researchers at University of Washington

• Roger Buickh-90
• Cecilia Bitzh-74
• Jody Demingh-64