Related papers: Limits of ultra-high-precision optical astrometry:…
The ultra-precise photometric space satellite MOST (Microvariability and Oscillations of STars) will provide the first opportunity to measure the albedos and scattered light curves from known short-period extrasolar planets. Due to the…
Extreme precision radial-velocity spectrometers enable extreme precision stellar spectroscopy. Searches for low-mass exoplanets around solar-type stars are limited by the physical variability in stellar spectra, such as the short-term…
Normal-mode oscillation frequencies computed from stellar models differ from those which would be measured from stars with identical interior structures, because of modelling errors in the near-surface layers. These frequency differences…
The direct detection of exoplanets has been the subject of intensive research in the recent years. Data obtained with future high-contrast imaging instruments optimized for giant planets direct detection are strongly limited by the speckle…
Stars are not smooth. Their photosphere is covered by a granulation pattern associated with the heat transport by convection. The convection-related surface structures have different size, depth, and temporal variations with respect to the…
CONTEXT: High-precision stellar analyses require hydrodynamic modeling to interpret chemical abundances or oscillation modes. Exoplanet atmosphere studies require stellar background spectra to be known along the transit path while detection…
Our understanding of the properties and demographics of exoplanets critically relies on our ability to determine fundamental properties of their host stars. The advent of Gaia and large spectroscopic surveys has now made it in principle…
In the context of the space-based mission CoRoT, devoted to asteroseismology and search for planet transits, we analyse the accuracy of fundamental stellar parameters (mass, radius, luminosity) that can be obtained from asteroseismological…
We use high resolution numerical simulations to study whether gravitational instabilities within circumstellar discs can produce astrometrically detectable motion of the central star. For discs with masses of M_disc = 0.1 M_star, which are…
The detection of small mass planets with the radial-velocity technique is now confronted with the interference of stellar noise. HARPS can now reach a precision below the meter-per-second, which corresponds to the amplitudes of different…
In recent years, gravitational lensing has been used as a means to detect substructure in galaxy-sized halos, via anomalous flux ratios in quadruply-imaged lenses. In addition to causing anomalous flux ratios, substructure may also perturb…
In asteroseismology, the surface effect refers to a disparity between the observed and the modelled frequencies in stars with solar-like oscillations. It originates from improper modelling of the surface layers. Correcting the surface…
In light of the growing interest in searching for low mass, rocky planets, we investigate the impact of starspots on radial velocity searches for earth-mass planets in orbit about M dwarf stars. Since new surveys targeting M dwarfs will…
In photometry, the short-timescale stellar variability ("flicker"), such as that caused by granulation and oscillations, can reach amplitudes comparable to the transit depth of Earth-sized planets and is correlated over the typical transit…
Astrometric measurements of stellar systems are becoming significantly more precise and common, with many ground and space-based instruments and missions approaching 1 microarcsecond precision. We examine the multi-wavelength astrometric…
A variation of gravitational redshift, arising from stellar radius fluctuations, will introduce astrophysical noise into radial velocity measurements by shifting the centroid of the observed spectral lines. Shifting the centroid does not…
Stellar flybys in star clusters are suspected to affect the orbital architecture of planetary systems causing eccentricity excitation and orbital misalignment between the planet orbit and the equatorial plane of the star. We explore whether…
Differential spectroscopy during exoplanet transits permits to reconstruct spectra of small stellar surface portions that successively become hidden behind the planet. The center-to-limb behavior of stellar line shapes, asymmetries and…
We have conducted an angular differential imaging survey with NIRC2 at Keck in search of close-in substellar companions to a sample of seven systems with confirmed planetary-mass companions (PMCs) on wide orbits (>50 AU). These…
In this work the latitude dependent stellar spot rotation is investigated based on dynamo models. The maps of the magnetic pressure at the surface from the dynamo calculations are treated similarly to the temperature maps obtained using…