Related papers: Design Considerations for a Ground-based Transit S…

Due to their small radii, M-dwarfs are very promising targets to search for transiting super-Earths, with a planet of 2 Earth radii orbiting an M5 dwarf in the habitable zone giving rise to a 0.5% photometric signal, with a period of two…

Detection and characterization of potentially habitable Earth-size extrasolar planets is one of the major goals of contemporary astronomy. By applying the transit method to very low-mass M-dwarfs, it is possible to find these planets from…

In the effort to characterize the masses, radii, and atmospheres of potentially habitable exoplanets, there is an urgent need to find examples of such planets transiting nearby M dwarfs. The MEarth Project is an ongoing effort to do so, as…

Earth-sized exoplanets that transit nearby, late spectral type red dwarfs will be prime targets for atmospheric characterization in the coming decade. Such systems, however, are difficult to find via wide-field transit surveys like Kepler…

We present design considerations for a ground-based survey for transiting exoplanets around L and T dwarfs, spectral classes that have yet to be thoroughly probed for planets. We simulate photometry for L and T targets with a variety of…

The MEarth Project is a ground-based photometric survey to find planets transiting the closest and smallest main-sequence stars. In its first four years, MEarth discovered one transiting exoplanet, the 2.7 Earth radius planet GJ1214b. Here,…

We present an improved estimate of the occurrence rate of small planets orbiting small stars by searching the full four-year Kepler data set for transiting planets using our own planet detection pipeline and conducting transit injection and…

Small planets are common around late-M dwarfs and can be detected through highly precise photometry by the transit method. Planets orbiting nearby stars are particularly important as they are often the best-suited for future follow-up…

To date the search for habitable Earth-like planets has primarily focused on nuclear burning stars. I propose that this search should be expanded to cool white dwarf stars that have expended their nuclear fuel. I define the continuously…

We present an analysis of a volume-complete sample of 363 mid-to-late M dwarfs within 15 pc of the Sun with masses between 0.1 and 0.3 M$_\odot$ observed by TESS within Observation Sectors 1 to 42. The median mass of the stars in this…

The MEarth survey is a search for small rocky planets around the smallest, nearest stars to the Sun as identified by high proper motion with red colors. We augmented our planetary search time series with lower cadence astrometric imaging…

Given the very close proximity of their habitable zones, brown dwarfs represent high-value targets in the search for nearby transiting habitable planets that may be suitable for follow-up occultation spectroscopy. In this paper we develop…

Because the planets of a system form in a flattened disk, they are expected to share similar orbital inclinations at the end of their formation. The high-precision photometric monitoring of stars known to host a transiting planet could thus…

Previous work has demonstrated that the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) has the capability to detect transiting planets around main sequence stars in relatively short ($<$ 20 days) periods and using standard algorithms for transit…

High-precision eclipse spectrophotometry of transiting terrestrial exoplanets represents a promising path for the first atmospheric characterizations of habitable worlds and the search for life outside our solar system. The detection of…

We investigate the detectability of atmospheric spectral features of Earth-like planets in the habitable zone (HZ) around M dwarfs with the future James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). We use a coupled 1D climate-chemistry-model to simulate…

Terrestrial planets are easier to detect around M dwarfs than other types of stars, making them promising for next-generation atmospheric characterization studies. The $TESS$ mission has greatly increased the number of known M dwarf planets…

We investigate an in-situ formation scenario for Earth-mass terrestrial planets in short-period, potentially habitable orbits around low-mass stars (M_star < 0.3 M_sun). We then investigate the feasibility of detecting these Earth-sized…

White dwarfs are one of the few types of stellar objects for which we know almost nothing about the possible existence of companion planets. Recent evidence for metal contaminated atmospheres, circumstellar debris disks and transiting…

We propose to use Kepler in 2-wheel mode to conduct a detailed search for Earth-sized planets orbiting ultra-cool stars and brown dwarfs (spectral types from M7 to L3). This population of objects presents several advantages for exoplanet…