Related papers: Reconstruction of the transit signal in the presen…
CoRoT-7b, the first super-Earth with measured radius discovered, has opened the new field of rocky exoplanets characterisation. To better understand this interesting system, new observations were taken with the CoRoT satellite. During this…
In this PhD dissertation, I discuss issues of the Radial Velocities (RV) and transit methods. These techniques allow us to derive the mass and radius of an exoplanet, necessary to model its bulk structure and to have insight on its…
We investigate the rate of false planetary transit detection due to blending with eclipsing binaries. Our approach is purely empirical and is based on the analysis of the artificially blended light curves of the eclipsing binary stars in…
Tidal interactions between short-period exoplanets and their host stars drive orbital decay and have likely led to engulfment of planets by their stars. Precise transit timing surveys, with baselines now spanning decades for some planets,…
I present an initial investigation into a new planet detection technique that uses the transit timing of a known, transiting planet. The transits of a solitary planet orbiting a star occur at equally spaced intervals in time. If a second…
We present a method that enables wide field ground-based telescopes to scan the sky for sub-second stellar variability. The method has operational and image processing components. The operational component is to take star trail images. Each…
Duration and period of transits in extrasolar planetary systems can exhibit long-term variations for a variety of reasons. Here we investigate how systemic proper motion, which steadily re-orients planetary orbit with respect to our line of…
For extrasolar planets with orbital periods, P>10 days, radial velocity surveys find non-circular orbital eccentricities are common, <e>~0.3. Future surveys for extrasolar planets using the transit technique will also have sensitivity to…
We propose a method for observing transiting exoplanets with near-infrared high-resolution spectrometers. We aim to create a robust data analysis method for recovering atmospheric transmission spectra from transiting exoplanets over a wide…
I derive the physical properties of 30 transiting extrasolar planetary systems using a homogeneous analysis of published data. The light curves are modelled with the JKTEBOP code, with attention paid to limb darkening and eccentricity. The…
Transits of hot Jupiters in X-rays and the ultraviolet have been shown to be both deeper and more variable than the corresponding optical transits. This variability has been attributed to hot Jupiters having extended atmospheres at these…
Context. Kepler observations have revealed a class of short period exoplanets, of which Kepler-1520 b is the prototype, which have comet-like dust tails thought to be the result of small, rocky planets losing mass. The shape and…
We analyze the surface structure of the planet host star CoRoT-2a using a consistent model for both the `global' (i.e., rotationally modulated) lightcurve and the transit lightcurves, using data provided by the CoRoT mission. Selecting a…
Recent and upcoming stabilized spectrographs are pushing the frontier for Doppler spectroscopy to detect and characterize low-mass planets. Specifications for these instruments are so impressive that intrinsic stellar variability is…
Transmission spectroscopy is a promising tool for the atmospheric characterization of transiting exoplanets. Because the planetary signal is faint, discrepancies have been reported regarding individual targets. We investigate the dependence…
Stellar activity and convection-related surface structures might cause bias in planet detection and characterization that use these transits. Surface convection simulations help to quantify the granulation signal. We used realistic…
Light curves show the flux variation from the target star and its orbiting planets as a function of time. In addition to the transit features created by the planets, the flux also includes the reflected light component of each planet, which…
The detection of planetary transits in the light curves of active stars, featuring correlated noise in the form of stellar variability, remains a challenge. Depending on the noise characteristics, we show that the traditional technique that…
Despite the success of discovering transiting exoplanets, several recently observed objects (e.g. KIC-8462852, J1407 and PDS-110) exhibit unconventional transit signals, whose appropriate interpretation in terms of a spherical single body…
Our aim in this paper is to refine the orbital and physical parameters of the HATS-2 planetary system and study transit timing variations and atmospheric composition thanks to transit observations that span more than ten years and that were…