Related papers: Precise Photometry and Spectroscopy of Transits
We investigate gravitational lensing effects of an extrasolar planet transiting its host star. We focus on the `rising spikes' of the light curve just before and after the transit, which is a peculiar feature of the gravitational lensing,…
In the blooming field of exoplanetary science, NASA's Kepler Space Telescope has revolutionized our understanding of exoplanets. Kepler's very precise and long-duration photometry is ideal for detecting planetary transits around Sun-like…
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…
Photometry from Kepler has revealed the presence of cool starspots on the surfaces of thousands of stars, presenting a wide range of spot morphologies and lifetimes. Understanding the lifetime and evolution of starspots across the main…
The orbital parameters of extra-solar planets have a significant impact on the probability that the planet will transit the host star. This was recently demonstrated by the transit detection of HD 17156b whose favourable eccentricity and…
Ground-based photometric surveys have led to the discovery of six transiting exoplanets, five of which were detected by the OGLE survey. The FLAMES multi-object spectrograph on the VLT has permitted a very efficient follow-up of the OGLE…
Reliable estimations of ephemeris errors are fundamental for the follow-up of CoRoT candidates. An equation for the precision of minimum times, originally developed for eclipsing binaries, has been optimized for CoRoT photometry and been…
Exoplanet transmission spectra, which measure the absorption of light passing through a planet's atmosphere during transit, are most often assessed globally, resulting in a single spectrum per planetary atmosphere. However, the inherent…
Transiting planet lightcurves have historically been used predominantly for measuring the depth and hence ratio of the planet-star radii, p. Equations have been previously presented by Seager & Mallen-Ornelas (2003) for the analysis of the…
Many of the planets discovered via the radial velocity technique are hot Jupiters in 3-5 day orbits with ~10$% chance of transiting their parent star. However, radial velocity surveys for extra-solar planets generally require substantial…
We introduce and describe our newly developed code that simulates light curves and radial velocity curves for arbitrary transiting exoplanets with a satellite. The most important feature of the program is the calculation of radial velocity…
By observing the transits of exoplanets, one may determine many fundamental system parameters. I review current techniques and results for the parameters that can be measured with the greatest precision, specifically, the transit times, the…
This thesis focuses on the detection of extrasolar planets via the transit method, and more specifically addresses issues relevant to the preparation of upcoming space missions such as CoRoT, Kepler, Eddington, aiming to detect terrestrial…
Research into light curves from stars (temporal variation of brightness) has completely changed how exoplanets are discovered or characterised. This study including star light curves from the Kepler dataset as a way to discover exoplanets…
Many ground-based photometric surveys are now under way, and five of them have been successful at detecting transiting exoplanets. Nevertheless, detecting transiting planets has turned out to be much more challenging than initially…
Photometric observations of planetary transits may show localized bumps, called transit anomalies, due to the possible crossing of photospheric starspots. The aim of this work is to analyze the transit anomalies and derive the temperature…
Precision infrared photometry from Spitzer has enabled the first direct studies of light from extrasolar planets, via observations at secondary eclipse in transiting systems. Current Spitzer results include the first longitudinal…
We have developed a new method to improve the transit detection of Earth-sized planets in front of solar-like stars by fitting stellar microvariability by means of a spot model. A large Monte Carlo numerical experiment has been designed to…
Transiting exoplanets provide detailed access to their atmospheres, as the planet's signal can be effectively separated from that of its host star. For transiting exoplanets three fundamental atmospheric measurements are possible:…
We present results of numerical simulations of flux and linear polarization variations in transiting exoplanetary systems, caused by the host star disk symmetry breaking. We consider different configurations of planetary transits depending…