Andrew W. Howard measures the physical properties and population of exoplanets. In the 2013 study with Erik A. Petigura and Geoffrey W. Marcy, the team searched Kepler space telescope photometry and inserted synthetic exoplanet transits into real observations to measure transit survey completeness.[ref]
A Plateau in the Planet Population Below Twice the Size of Earth by Erik A. Petigura and others. Abstract: transit injection/recovery, stellar spectroscopy and occurrence versus planet radius
Correcting missed detections changed the question from “how many candidates were found?” to the underlying exoplanet occurrence rate. For the study's 5–50-day orbital periods, the rising distribution flattened below about twice Earth's radius.
Portrait of Andrew W. Howard
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