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We report spectroscopic and photometric follow-up of a dormant black hole (BH) candidate from Gaia DR3. The system, which we call Gaia BH2, contains a $\sim 1M_{\odot}$ red giant and a dark companion with mass $M_2 = 8.9\pm 0.3\,M_{\odot}$ that is very likely a BH. The orbital period, $P_{\rm orb} = 1277$ days, is much longer than that of any previously studied BH binary. Our radial velocity (RV) follow-up over a 7-month period spans more than 90% of the orbit's dynamic range in RV and is in excellent agreement with predictions of the Gaia solution. UV imaging and high-resolution optical spectra rule out all plausible luminous companions that could explain the orbit. The star is a bright ($G=12.3$), slightly metal-poor ($\rm [Fe/H]=-0.22$) low-luminosity giant ($T_{\rm eff}=4600\,\rm K$; $R = 7.8\,R_{\odot}$; $\log\left[g/\left({\rm cm\,s^{-2}}\right)\right] = 2.6$). The binary's orbit is moderately eccentric ($e=0.52$). The giant is strongly enhanced in $\alpha-$elements, with $\rm [\alpha/Fe] = +0.26$, but the system's Galactocentric orbit is typical of the thin disk. We obtained X-ray and radio nondetections of the source near periastron, which support BH accretion models in which the net accretion rate at the horizon is much lower than the Bondi-Hoyle-Lyttleton rate. At a distance of 1.16 kpc, Gaia BH2 is the second-nearest known BH, after Gaia BH1. Its orbit -- like that of Gaia BH1 -- seems too wide to have formed through common envelope evolution. Gaia BH1 and BH2 have orbital periods at opposite edges of the Gaia DR3 sensitivity curve, perhaps hinting at a bimodal intrinsic period distribution for wide BH binaries. Dormant BH binaries like Gaia BH1 and Gaia BH2 likely significantly outnumber their close, X-ray bright cousins, but their formation pathways remain uncertain., Comment: Accepted to MNRAS

Warm Jupiters provide a unique opportunity to better understand the formation and evolution of planetary systems. Their atmospheric properties remain largely unaltered by the impact of the host star, and their orbital arrangement reflects a different, and less extreme, migrational history compared to close-in objects. Warm Jupiters are known to cover a wide range of eccentricities but it is unclear which are the dominant formation pathways to explain this observation. Increasing the sample of long-period exoplanets with known radii is thus crucial. In this talk, I report the results of a survey set out to find transiting giants with orbital periods between 20 and 200 days. We selected 50 stars which show a single transit in one TESS sector (27 day baseline) and followed them with ground-based photometric and radial velocity facilities (e.g. NGTS, HARPS). After one year of observations, we report the detection and characterization of ten new transiting warm Jupiters, increasing by 50% the number of known warm Jupiters with precise masses and radii. We infer the metal enrichment of the newly discovered warm Jupiters and explore their influence on the mass-metallicity correlation of giant planets. The growing sample of warm Jupiters allows us to interpret these systems in terms of planet formation models. Finally, these targets orbit bright stars and thus are ideal for follow-up studies of the planetary atmosphere and the system' spin-orbit alignment. This work is a stepping stone for PLATO, as identification and follow up of single transit events will be key in order to detect transiting Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone of Sun-like stars.

We report the discovery of TOI-4562 b (TIC-349576261), a Jovian planet orbiting a young F7V-type star, younger than the Praesepe/Hyades clusters (< $700$ Myr). This planet stands out because of its unusually long orbital period for transiting planets with known masses ($P_{\mathrm{orb}}$ = $225.11781^{+0.00025}_{-0.00022}$ days), and because it has a substantial eccentricity ($e$ = $0.76^{+0.02}_{-0.02}$). The location of TOI-4562 near the southern continuous viewing zone of TESS allowed observations throughout 25 sectors, enabling an unambiguous period measurement from TESS alone. Alongside the four available TESS transits, we performed follow-up photometry using the South African Astronomical Observatory node of the Las Cumbres Observatory, and spectroscopy with the CHIRON spectrograph on the 1.5 m SMARTS telescope. We measure a radius of $1.118_{+0.013}^{-0.014}$ $R_{\mathrm{J}}$ and a mass of $2.30^{+0.48}_{-0.47}$ $M_{\mathrm{J}}$ for TOI-4562 b. The radius of the planet is consistent with contraction models describing the early evolution of the size of giant planets. We detect tentative transit timing variations at the $\sim$ 20 min level from five transit events, favouring the presence of a companion that could explain the dynamical history of this system if confirmed by future follow-up observations. With its current orbital configuration, tidal timescales are too long for TOI-4562 b to become a hot-Jupiter via high eccentricity migration, though it is not excluded that interactions with the possible companion could modify TOI-4562 b eccentricity and trigger circularization. The characterisation of more such young systems is essential to set constraints on models describing giant planet evolution., 24 pages, 12 figures, 4 tables. Accepted in The Astronomical Journal (24/01/2023)

With the maturation of near-infrared high-resolution spectroscopy, especially when used for precision radial velocity, data reduction has faced unprecedented challenges in terms of how one goes from raw data to calibrated, extracted, and corrected data with required precisions of thousandths of a pixel. Here we present APERO (A PipelinE to Reduce Observations), specifically focused on SPIRou, the near-infrared spectropolarimeter on the Canada--France--Hawaii Telescope (SPectropolarim\`etre InfraROUge, CFHT). In this paper, we give an overview of APERO and detail the reduction procedure for SPIRou. APERO delivers telluric-corrected 2D and 1D spectra as well as polarimetry products. APERO enables precise stable radial velocity measurements on sky (via the LBL algorithm), good to at least ~2 m/s over the current 5-year lifetime of SPIRou., Comment: Accepted for publication in PASP. 55 pages, 29 figures, 10 pages of Appendices

As technology continues to improve communication between cultures, foreign accents are becoming more common in everyday life and, therefore, more important to analyze. The objective of this study was to examine how a range of accents are perceived, and how that may relate to the brain’s electrical activity. Fourteen female participants from Roanoke College listened to twelve clips of different accents speaking English while their brain activity was measured using electroencephalography (EEG). There were six speakers with two audio clips each. Four of the six speakers were using English as a native language, while the other two speakers were non-native English speakers. Each participant heard a male and female American, Irish, and Saudi Arabian speaker. After each clip the participants were asked to rate the accent on a Likert scale for understanding, comfortability, trustworthiness, and likability. Electrodes were placed over the frontal lobe for a sufficient understanding of executive reactions to the accents, as well as over the parietal lobe to measure basic audition. Data was then analyzed through Fast Fourier Transformation (FFT) to find the frequency of the brain waves. Significant effects regarding how participants perceived the different accents based on survey data were found. It was found that participants rated females higher and enjoyed listening to the Irish accent most, but understood the American accent best and Saudi Arabian accent least. The results showed no significant findings for the EEG recordings. These results show that further research needs to be done, perhaps restructuring when participants are asked questions about the accent and creating a task during the audio clip to allow the participant to focus more on the actual content of the text.