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The study of extra-solar planetary systems has emerged as a new discipline of observational astronomy in the past few years with the discovery of a number of extra-solar planets. The properties of most of these extra-solar planets were not…
The bulk composition of an exoplanet is commonly inferred from its average density. For small planets, however, the average density is not unique within the range of compositions. Variations of a number of important planetary…
Many extrasolar (bound) terrestrial planets and free-floating (unbound) planets have been discovered. The existence of bound and unbound terrestrial planets with liquid water is an important question, and of particular importance is the…
Of the over 200 known extrasolar planets, 14 exhibit transits in front of their parent stars as seen from Earth. Spectroscopic observations of the transiting planets can probe the physical conditions of their atmospheres. One such technique…
From the 389 2002 OGLE-III observations of Galactic Bulge microlensing events we select 321 that are well described by a point-source point-lens lightcurve model. From this sample we identify n=1 event, 2002-BLG-055, which we regard as a…
Microlensing is potentially sensitive to multiple-planet systems containing analogs of all the solar system planets except Mercury, as well as to free floating planets. I review the landscape of microlensing planet searches, beginning with…
Various methods have been proposed to search for extrasolar planets. Compared to the other methods, microlensing has unique applicabilities to the detections of Earth-mass and free-floating planets. However, the microlensing method is…
Orbital variation in reflected starlight from exoplanets could eventually be used to detect surface oceans. Exoplanets with rough surfaces, or dominated by atmospheric Rayleigh scattering, should reach peak brightness in full phase, orbital…
We report the discovery of a Jupiter-mass planet orbiting an M-dwarf star that gave rise to the microlensing event OGLE-2011-BLG-0265. Such a system is very rare among known planetary systems and thus the discovery is important for…
Whereas the Solar System has Mars and Europa as the best candidates for finding fossil/extant life as we know it - based on complex carbon compounds and liquid water - the 263 (non-pulsar) planetary systems around other stars as known at 15…
The diversity and quantity of moons in the Solar System suggest a manifold population of natural satellites exist around extrasolar planets. Of peculiar interest from an astrobiological perspective, the number of sizable moons in the…
Rogue planets have been ejected from their planetary system. We investigate the possibility that a rogue planet could maintain a liquid ocean under layers of thermally-insulating water ice and frozen atmosphere as a result of geothermal…
Several studies, observational and theoretical, suggest that planetary systems with only rocky planets should be the most common in the Universe. We study the diversity of planetary systems that might form around Sun-like stars in low-mass…
Some low-mass planets are expected to be ejected from their parent planetary systems during early stages of planetary system formation. According to planet-formation theories, such as the core accretion theory, typical masses of ejected…
Small rocky planets, as well as larger planets that suffered extensive volatile loss, tend to be drier and have thinner atmospheres as compared to Earth. Such planets probably outnumber worlds better endowed with volatiles, being the most…
Our understanding of extra-solar planet systems is highly driven by advances in observations in the past decade. Thanks to high precision spectrograph, we are able to reveal unseen companions to stars with the radial velocity method. High…
Searches for extrasolar planets have uncovered an astonishing diversity of planetary systems, yet the frequency of solar system analogs remains unknown. The gravitational microlensing planet search method is potentially sensitive to…
We conducted a project of reinvestigating the 2017--2019 microlensing data collected by the high-cadence surveys with the aim of finding planets that were missed due to the deviations of planetary signals from the typical form of short-term…
Thirteen exo-planets have been discovered using the gravitational microlensing technique (out of which 7 have been published). These planets already demonstrate that super-Earths (with mass up to ~10 Earth masses) beyond the snow line are…
Are microlensing searches likely to discover planets that harbor life? Given our present state of knowledge, this is a difficult question to answer. We therefore begin by asking a more narrowly focused question: are conditions on planets…