The abundance of heavy elements (metallicity) in the photospheres of stars similar to the Sun provides a 'fossil' record of the chemical composition of the initial protoplanetary disk. Metal-rich stars are much more likely to harbour gas giant planets, supporting the model that planets form by accumulation of dust and ice particles. Recent ground-based surveys suggest that this correlation is weakened for Neptunian-sized planets. However, how the relationship between size and metallicity extends into the regime of terrestrial-sized exoplanets is unknown. Here we report spectroscopic metallicities of the host stars of 226 small exoplanet candidates discovered by NASA's Kepler mission, including objects that are comparable in size to the terrestrial planets in the Solar System. We find that planets with radii less than four Earth radii form around host stars with a wide range of metallicities (but on average a metallicity close to that of the Sun), whereas large planets preferentially form around stars with higher metallicities. This observation suggests that terrestrial planets may be widespread in the disk of the Galaxy, with no special requirement of enhanced metallicity for their formation.

We report 25,563 radial velocity measurements for 1359 single-lined stars in the Carney-Latham sample of 1464 stars selected for high proper motion. For 171 of these, we present spectroscopic orbital solutions. We find no obvious difference between the binary characteristics in the halo and the disk populations. The observed frequency is the same, and the period distributions are consistent with the hypothesis that the two sets of binaries were drawn from the same parent population. This suggests that metallicity in general, and radiative opacities in particular, have little influence over the fragmentation process that leads to short-period binaries. All the binaries with periods shorter than 10 days have nearly circular orbits, while the binaries with periods longer than 20 days exhibit a wide range of eccentricities and a median value of 0.37. For the metalpoor high-velocity halo binaries in our sample, the transition from circular to eccentric orbits appears to occur at about 20 days, supporting the conclusion that tidal circularization on the main sequence is important for the oldest binaries in the Galaxy.

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HST ACS images of the young SN remnant Cas A are used to explore the expansion and spatial distribution of its highest velocity debris. Proper motions of over 1800 outlying ejecta knots are reported. The distribution of transverse expansion velocities for these knots shows a striking bipolar asymmetry with the highest velocity knots confined to nearly opposing northeast and southwest `jets'. The jets appear kinematically and chemically distinct with respect to the remnant's highest velocity debris seen in other directions. Significant gaps in the spatial distribution of outlying ejecta lie in directions which are approximately perpendicular to the jets. Extrapolations of 9 month proper motions for all outer ejecta knots and a subsample of 72 bright and compact knots suggest explosion dates (assuming no knot deceleration) of 1662 +/- 27 and 1672 +/- 18, respectively. We find some evidence for non-uniform deceleration in different directions with knots located along the northwestern limb among the least decelerated ejecta suggesting a convergence date of 1681 +/-19. The remnant's central X-ray point source lies some $7''$ to the southeast of the estimated expansion center (PA = 169 deg) indicating a projected motion of ~350 km/s toward the middle of the broad southern outer ejecta knot gap.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures, ApJ, in pres