Event Details

Observations of exoplanets over the past quarter century have shown that the demographics and architectures of planetary systems are remarkably diverse. Direct imaging has opened up much of this landscape at wide separations to probe the orbits and atmospheres of long-period giant planets. Large dedicated surveys are constraining the occurrence rate and mass-period distribution functions of this population with progressively improved precision, providing a window into the efficiency of planet formation and migration at large orbital distances. In this talk I will review recent progress aimed at understanding the frequency, orbital properties, dynamical masses, and angular momentum architectures of imaged exoplanets. Together these results are beginning to clarify the dominant formation pathway of these companions, their relationship to planets at smaller separations, and the pathway forward to ultimately imaging and characterizing Earth analogs— one of the most formidable but consequential goals in modern astronomy