Related papers: Inverting Phase Functions to Map Exoplanets
In this paper a homomorphic filtering scheme is proposed to improve the estimation of the planet/star radius ratio in astronomical transit signals. The idea is to reduce the effect of the short-term earth atmosphere variations. A two-step…
[Abridged] Context. Stellar activity is an important source of systematic errors and uncertainties in the characterization of exoplanets. Most of the techniques used to correct for this activity focus on an ad hoc data reduction. Aims. We…
Examining reflected light from exoplanets aids in our understanding of the scattering properties of their atmospheres and will be a primary task of future flagship space- and ground-based telescopes. We introduce an enhanced capability of…
Kepler has detected numerous exoplanet transits by precise measurements of stellar light in a single visible-wavelength band. In addition to detection, the precise photometry provides phase curves of exoplanets, which can be used to study…
Short-period planets suffer from extreme tidal forces from their parent stars causing them to deform and attain non-spherical shapes. The planet shapes, modeled here as triaxial ellipsoids, can have an impact on the observed transit light…
Next-generation space telescopes will allow us to characterize terrestrial exoplanets. To do so effectively it will be crucial to make use of all available data. We investigate which atmospheric properties can, and cannot, be inferred from…
Detection of a planetary ring of exoplanets remains as one of the most attractive but challenging goals in the field. We present a methodology of a systematic search for exoplanetary rings via transit photometry of long-period planets. The…
Optical phase curves have become one of the common probes of exoplanetary atmospheres, but the information they encode has not been fully elucidated. Building on a diverse body of work, we upgrade the Flexible Modeling System (FMS) to…
The observed light curves of most eclipsing binaries and stars with transiting planets can be well described and interpreted by current advanced physical models which also allow for the determination of many physical parameters of eclipsing…
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 limb darkening is the observed variation in brightness of a star between its centre and edge (or limb) when viewed in the plane of the sky. Stellar brightness is maximal at the centre and then decreases radially and monotonically…
Generalized beams of light that are made to turn inside out, creating black nodal areas of total destructive interference are described. As an example we experimentally created an elliptical node from a uniformly illuminated elliptical…
Unmixing the disk-integrated spectra of exoplanets provides hints about heterogeneous surfaces that we cannot directly resolve in the foreseeable future. It is particularly important for terrestrial planets with diverse surface compositions…
The field of visible-light continuous time series photometry is now at its golden age, manifested by the continuum of past (CoRoT, Kepler), present (K2), and future (TESS, PLATO) space-based surveys delivering high precision data with a…
Diluted arrays of many optical apertures will be able to provide h igh-resolution snapshot images if the beams are combined according to the densified-pupil scheme. We show that the same principle can also provide coronagraphic images, for…
Reflected light curves observed for exoplanets indicate bright clouds at some of them. We estimate how the light curve and total stellar heating of a planet depend on forward and backward scattering in the clouds based on Pioneer and…
Improved photometric sensitivity from space-based telescopes have enabled the detection of phase variations for a small sample of hot Jupiters. However, exoplanets in highly eccentric orbits present unique opportunities to study the effects…
Although there exists a large sample of known exoplanets, little spectroscopic data exists that can be used to study their global atmospheric properties. This deficiency can be addressed by performing phase-resolved spectroscopy --…
We present a novel method for direct detection and characterization of exoplanets from space. This method uses four collecting telescopes, combined with phase chopping and a spectrometer, with observations on only a few baselines rather…
The mutual orbital alignment in multiple planetary systems is an important parameter for understanding their formation. There are a number of elaborate techniques to determine the alignment parameters using photometric or spectroscopic…