Related papers: Double-blind test program for astrometric planet d…
Astrometry can detect rocky planets in a broad range of masses and orbital distances and measure their masses and three-dimensional orbital parameters, including eccentricity and inclination, to provide the properties of terrestrial…
We present a proof of concept for a new algorithm which can be used to detect exoplanets in high contrast images. The algorithm properly combines mutliple observations acquired during different nights, taking into account the orbital motion…
Identifying and removing binary stars from stellar samples is a crucial but complicated task. Regardless of how carefully a sample is selected, some binaries will remain and complicate interpretation of results, especially via flux…
We investigated the reliability of the genetic algorithm which will be used to invert the photometric measurements of asteroids collected by the European Space Agency Gaia mission. To do that, we performed several sets of simulations for 10…
Stellar chemical compositions can be altered by ingestion of planetary material and/or planet formation which removes refractory material from the proto-stellar disc. These "planet signatures" appear as correlations between elemental…
Compact object binaries (a black hole or a neutron star orbiting a non-degenerate stellar companion) are key to our understanding of late massive star evolution, in addition to being some of the best probes of extreme gravity and accretion…
Multiple stellar systems are ubiquitous in the Milky Way, but are often unresolved and seen as single objects in spectroscopic, photometric, and astrometric surveys. Yet, modeling them is essential for developing a full understanding of…
The Gaia mission is described, focussing on those technical aspects that are necessary to understand the details of its external (absolute) flux calibration. On board of Gaia there will be two (spectro)photometers, the blue one (BP) and the…
Recent ground and space-based observations show that stars with multiple planets are common in the galaxy. Most of these observational methods are biased toward detecting large planets near to their host stars. Because of these…
The Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) is expected to make precise astrometric measurements that can be used to detect low mass planets around nearby stars. Since most nearby stars are members of multiple star systems, many stars will have…
Gaia can not individually resolve very close binary systems, however, the collected data can still be used to identify them. A powerful indicator of stellar multiplicity is the sources reported Renormalized Unit Weight Error (ruwe), which…
We discuss the detectability of gravitationally bounded pairs of gas-giant planets (which we call "binary planets") in extrasolar planetary systems that are formed through orbital instability followed by planet-planet dynamical tides during…
The Kepler mission has discovered over 2500 exoplanet candidates in the first two years of spacecraft data, with approximately 40% of them in candidate multi-planet systems. The high rate of multiplicity combined with the low rate of…
Accurate stellar masses are requested in order to improve our understanding of stellar interiors, but they are still rather rare. Fortunately, the forthcoming Gaia Mission will provide astrometric measurements permitting the derivation of…
When, in the course of searching for exoplanets, sparse sampling and noisy data make it necessary to disentangle possible solutions to the observations, one must consider the possibility that what appears to be a single eccentric Keplerian…
Determining the orbital eccentricity of an extrasolar planet is critically important for understanding the system's dynamical environment and history. However, eccentricity is often poorly determined or entirely mischaracterized due to poor…
A significant number of double stars with separations up to 2.5 arcsec are present in the Gaia Data Release 1 astrometric catalogs. Limiting our analysis to a well-studied sample of 1124 doubles resolved by Hipparcos, provided with…
Since July 2014, the ESA Gaia mission has been surveying the entire sky down to magnitude 20.7 in the visible. In addition to the millions of stars, thousands of Solar System Objects (SSOs) are observed daily. By comparing their positions…
We present a framework for the analysis of direct detection planet finding missions using space telescopes. This framework generates simulations of complete missions, with varying populations of planets, to produce ensembles of mission…
Exoplanetary systems exhibit a broad range of architectures which, in turn, enable a variety of dynamical environments. Many of the known planetary systems do not transit the host star, and so we measure the minimum masses of their planets,…