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Drew Weisserman

@drewweisserman.bsky.social

McMaster Astronomy PhD student. send me pictures of your pets or I will steal them. he/him 🏳️‍🌈 check out my research: https://drewweis.github.io/

1552 Posts792 Follower597 Folgt
Drew Weisserman@drewweisserman.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Paper day!!! 🎉 arxiv.org/abs/2604.07447 ⬇️ #exoplanets #astronomy It all starts with planets around really small stars (M dwarfs). There's some evidence that planets around these stars form fundamentally differently than around stars like our Sun. We think that planets around these stars may 1/

Super-Earth masses and stellar abundances from NIRPS reveal tentative evidence for water-rich formation around M dwarfs

Tracing the compositional link between terrestrial super-Earths and their host stars provides clues to their dominant formation pathway. By constraining the stellar abundances of refractory elements, we can predict the core mass fractions (CMFs) of their super-Earths. The level of agreement between this prediction and the planetary CMF derived from their masses and radii can reveal past formation processes, like mantle stripping and water-rich formation plus sequestration in the planet's core. Here, we present the first results from the Near Infrared Planet Searcher (NIRPS) GTO CMF subprogram: an intensive radial velocity campaign to refine masses and compute host stellar abundances of three hot super- Earths around M dwarfs (GJ 1132 b, GJ 1252 b, and LTT 3780 b), calculating masses of $1.69 \pm 0.15M_\oplus$, $1.54 \pm 0.18M_\oplus$, and $2.34 \pm 0.10M_\oplus$ respectively. We measure the CMFs of these and six further hot super-Earths with precise masses already available in the literature to 10-15% precision. We compare these to CMF predictions made from measuring the Fe, Mg, and Si abundances of their host stars measured from the NIRPS spectra. We find that the CMFs of these planets are smaller than expected from their host stellar abundances, to a statistically significant degree. This discrepancy is suggestive of significant reservoirs of water, and while these planets are too hot to harbor surface water, they likely have interior water mass fractions of $\sim$1%.

arxiv.org

Astrobites@astrobites.bsky.social · 6mo ago

From Evan Nelles Henderson: We use bottles, and sometimes a Brita, but how do planets store their water? The authors of today’s paper made a model to find out, and to evaluate whether certain planets are good at hanging on to their water or not. ⚛️ 🔭 ☄️ 🧪 astrobites.org/2026/02/17/h...

Hang On To Your Water, Super-Earths!

We use bottles, and sometimes a Brita, but how do planets store their water? The authors of today’s paper made a model to find out, and to evaluate whether certain planets are good at hanging on to th...

astrobites.org

E.J. Fagan@ejfagan.com · 6mo ago

People are reading this way wrong. Schumer detached DHS from the other five bills in return for a two week CR on the DHS bill. Now Democrats can make demands on DHS spending without having to shut down agencies covered in the other five bills. They have way more leverage to get real concessions.

John@johnlk.bsky.social · 6mo ago

People just going out here saying the literal opposite of what happened. Thune caved! Thune did! This is a cave by Thune and Senate Republicans, any possible way you cut it.

Sahil Kapur@sahilkapur.bsky.social · 7mo ago

221-205, House passes the “motion to discharge” the Jeffries 3-year ACA funding extension. NINE (!) Republicans join unanimous Democrats in voting to advance it. This tees up a final House vote tomorrow; it’s poised to sail through.

Sean Casten@seancasten.bsky.social · 11mo ago

9. The promise of democracy is that it will fix mistakes. The threat of autocracy is that it sets those mistakes in stone. And we would all be better off with a SCOTUS that embraced the former rather than praising the latter. /fin