Related papers: First detection of polarized scattered light from …

[Abridged] Recently, there have been a series of detections of molecules in the atmospheres of extrasolar planets using high spectral resolution (R~100,000) observations, mostly using the CRyogenic high-resolution InfraRed Echelle…

Salt clouds are predicted to be common on warm exoplanets, but their optical properties are uncertain. The Exoplanet Cloud Ensemble Scattering System (ExCESS), a new apparatus to measure the scattering intensity and degree of linear…

We investigate the effect of planetary rotation on the transit spectrum of an extrasolar giant planet. During ingress and egress, absorption features arising from the planet's atmosphere are Doppler shifted by of order the planet's…

We report detection of strong infrared thermal emission from the nearby (d=19 pc) transiting extrasolar planet HD189733b, by measuring the flux decrement during its prominent secondary eclipse. A 6-hour photometric sequence using Spitzer's…

We present Spitzer Space Telescope time series photometry of the exoplanet system HD 189733 spanning two times of secondary eclipse, when the planet passes out of view behind the parent star. We estimate the relative eclipse depth in 5…

Observations of exoplanet transit spectra are essential to understanding the physics and chemistry of distant worlds. The effects of opacity sources and many physical processes combine to set the shape of a transit spectrum. Two such key…

It is expected that the next generation of high-contrast imaging instruments will deliver the first unresolved image of an extrasolar planet. The emitted thermal infrared light from the planet should show no phase effect assuming the planet…

High resolution spectroscopy has opened the way for new, detailed study of exoplanet atmospheres. There is evidence that this technique can be sensitive to the complex, three-dimensional (3D) atmospheric structure of these planets. In this…

We investigate the prospects for characterizing extrasolar giant planets by measuring planetary oblateness from transit photometry and inferring planetary rotational periods. The rotation rates of planets in the solar system vary widely,…

We investigated the potential of polarimetric observations in the optical wavelength range for the detection of exomoons and the characterization of exoplanet-exomoon systems. Using the three-dimensional Monte Carlo radiative transfer code…

We present the first ground-based detection of thermal emission from an exoplanet in the H-band. Using HAWK-I on the VLT, we observed an occultation of WASP-19b by its G8V-type host star. WASP-19b is a Jupiter-mass planet with an orbital…

We present the first optical polarimetric observations of the runaway microquasar LS 5039. Our results reveal the presence of a large amount (~5%) of polarized emission towards this binary system. By combining polarimetric and spectroscopic…

Two decades after the discovery of 51 Peg b, the formation processes and atmospheres of short-period gas giants remain poorly understood. Observations of eccentric systems provide key insights on those topics as they can illuminate how a…

Since the discovery of the first exoplanets more than 20 years ago, there has been an increasing need for photometric and spectroscopic models to characterize these systems. While imaging has been used extensively for Solar System bodies…

We point out some advantages of making observations of extrasolar planets in linearly polarized (LP) light. Older cool stars have quite low levels (~ 10^-4 to 10^-5) of fractional LP, while extrasolar planets can have relatively high…

We present our analysis of the red-channel CoRoT data of CoRoT-2b. A deep secondary eclipse is detected at a level of 1.02+-0.20 x10-4, which suggests that all of the planet-signal detected previously in white light by Alonso et al. (2009)…

Context. Clouds have already been detected in exoplanetary atmospheres. They play crucial roles in a planet's atmosphere and climate and can also create ambiguities in the determination of atmospheric parameters such as trace gas mixing…

We report the detection of the secondary eclipse of the hot Jupiter HD 209458b in optical/visible light using the CHEOPS space telescope. Our measurement of 20.4 +/- 3.3 ppm translates into a geometric albedo of A_g = 0.096 +/- 0.016. The…

X-ray polarimetry has the potential to make key-contributions to our understanding of galactic compact objects like binary black hole systems and neutron stars, and extragalactic objects like active galactic nuclei, blazars, and Gamma Ray…

One of the main atmospheric features in exoplanet atmospheres, detectable both from ground- and space-based facilities, is Rayleigh scattering. In hydrogen-dominated planetary atmospheres, Rayleigh scattering causes the measured planetary…