ImageJ is a graphical user interface (GUI) driven, public domain, Java-based, software package for general image processing traditionally used mainly in life sciences fields. The image processing capabilities of ImageJ are useful and extendable to other scientific fields. Here we present AstroImageJ (AIJ), which provides an astronomy specific image display environment and tools for astronomy specific image calibration and data reduction. Although AIJ maintains the general purpose image processing capabilities of ImageJ, AIJ is streamlined for time-series differential photometry, light curve detrending and fitting, and light curve plotting, especially for applications requiring ultra-precise light curves (e.g., exoplanet transits). AIJ reads and writes standard FITS files, as well as other common image formats, provides FITS header viewing and editing, and is World Coordinate System (WCS) aware, including an automated interface to the astrometry.net web portal for plate solving images. AIJ provides research grade image calibration and analysis tools with a GUI driven approach, and easily installed cross-platform compatibility. It enables new users, even at the level of undergraduate student, high school student, or amateur astronomer, to quickly start processing, modeling, and plotting astronomical image data with one tightly integrated software package.

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We present the discovery of KELT-1b, the first transiting low-mass companion from the wide-field Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope-North (KELT-North) transit survey, which surveys ∼ 40% of the northern sky to search for transiting planets around bright stars. The initial transit signal was robustly identified in the KELT-North survey data, and the low-mass nature of the occultor was confirmed via a combination of followup photometry, high-resolution spectroscopy, and radial velocity measurements. False positives are disfavored by the achromaticity of the primary transits in several bands, a lack of evidence for a secondary eclipse, and insignificant bisector variations. A joint analysis of the spectroscopic, radial velocity, and photometric data indicates that the V = 10.7 primary is a mildly evolved mid-F star with T eff = 6518 ± 50 K, log g * = 4.229 +0.012 −0.019

The amount of ultraviolet irradiation and ablation experienced by a planet depends strongly on the temperature of its host star. Of the thousands of extrasolar planets now known, only six have been found that transit hot, A-type stars (with temperatures of 7,300-10,000 kelvin), and no planets are known to transit the even hotter B-type stars. For example, WASP-33 is an A-type star with a temperature of about 7,430 kelvin, which hosts the hottest known transiting planet, WASP-33b (ref. 1); the planet is itself as hot as a red dwarf star of type M (ref. 2). WASP-33b displays a large heat differential between its dayside and nightside, and is highly inflated-traits that have been linked to high insolation. However, even at the temperature of its dayside, its atmosphere probably resembles the molecule-dominated atmospheres of other planets and, given the level of ultraviolet irradiation it experiences, its atmosphere is unlikely to be substantially ablated over the lifetime of its star. Here we report observations of the bright star HD 195689 (also known as KELT-9), which reveal a close-in (orbital period of about 1.48 days) transiting giant planet, KELT-9b. At approximately 10,170 kelvin, the host star is at the dividing line between stars of type A and B, and we measure the dayside temperature of KELT-9b to be about 4,600 kelvin. This is as hot as stars of stellar type K4 (ref. 5). The molecules in K stars are entirely dissociated, and so the primary sources of opacity in the dayside atmosphere of KELT-9b are probably atomic metals. Furthermore, KELT-9b receives 700 times more extreme-ultraviolet radiation (that is, with wavelengths shorter than 91.2 nanometres) than WASP-33b, leading to a predicted range of mass-loss rates that could leave the planet largely stripped of its envelope during the main-sequence lifetime of the host star.

We derive a classical path expression for a pressure-broadened atomic spectral line shape that allows for an electric-dipole moment that is dependent on the position of perturbers. The theory is applied to the atomic hydrogen Lyman-␣ and Lyman-␤ lines broadened by collisions with neutral and ionized atomic hydrogen. The far wings of the Lyman series lines exhibit satellites, enhancements that may be associated with quasimolecular states of H 2 and H 2 ϩ . The sizes of these features depend on the values of the electric-dipole moments at the internuclear separations responsible for the satellites. Profiles are computed with and without spatial dependence of the dipole moment, and are compared with astronomical and laboratory observations. We conclude that in the present case the variation of the dipole moment is an important factor that cannot be neglected.