Related papers: Detecting transits from Earth-sized planets around…

Intrinsic stellar variability can hinder the detection of shallow transits, particularly in space-based data. Therefore, this variability has to be filtered out before running the transit search. Unfortunately, filtering out the low…

Searching for transits provides a very promising technique for finding close-in extra-solar planets. Transiting planets present the advantage of allowing one to determine physical properties such as mass and radius unambiguously. The…

As a planet eclipses its parent star, a dark spot on the surface of the star may be occulted, causing a detectable variation in the light curve. A total of 77 consecutive transit light curves of CoRoT-2 were observed with a high temporal…

In the effort to characterize the masses, radii, and atmospheres of potentially habitable exoplanets, there is an urgent need to find examples of such planets transiting nearby M dwarfs. The MEarth Project is an ongoing effort to do so, as…

The detrending algorithms which are widely used to reduce the impact of stellar variability on space-based transit surveys are ill-suited for estimating the parameters of confirmed planets, as they unavoidably alter the transit signal. We…

To prepare for the analyses of the future PLATO light curves, we develop a deep learning model, Panopticon, to detect transits in high precision photometric light curves. Since PLATO's main objective is the detection of temperate Earth-size…

We analyze the properties of searches devoted to finding planetary transits by observing simple stellar systems, such as globular clusters, open clusters, and the Galactic bulge. We develop the analytic tools necessary to predict the number…

CoRoT-2, the second planet-hosting star discovered by the CoRoT satellite, is a young and active star. A total of 77 transits were observed for this system over a period of 135 days. Small modulations detected in the optical light curve of…

The small sizes of low mass stars in principle provide an opportunity to find Earth-like planets and "super-Earths" in habitable zones via transits. Large area synoptic surveys like Pan-STARRS and LSST will observe large numbers of low mass…

CoRoT, which was launched successfully on the 27th of December 2006, is the first space mission to have the search for planetary transits at the heart of its science programme. It is expected to be able to detect transits of planets with…

We investigate whether rings around extrasolar planets could be detected from those planets' transit lightcurves. To this end we develop a basic theoretical framework for calculating and interpreting the lightcurves of ringed planet…

Variations related to stellar activity and correlated noise can prevent the detections of low-amplitude signals in radial velocity data if not accounted for. This can be seen as the greatest obstacle in detecting Earth-like planets orbiting…

We present results from a search for additional transiting planets in 24 systems already known to contain a transiting planet. We model the transits due to the known planet in each system and subtract these models from lightcurves obtained…

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…

The forthcoming space missions, able to detect Earth-like planets by the transit method, will a fortiori also be able to detect the transit of artificial planet-size objects. Multiple artificial objects would produce lightcurves easily…

We investigate the improved detection of extrasolar planets around eclipsing binaries using eclipse minima timing, and extrasolar moons around transiting planets using transit timing, offered by the upcoming COROT (ESA, 2005), Kepler (NASA,…

Transiting planet systems offer an unique opportunity to observationally constrain proposed models of the interiors (radius, composition) and atmospheres (chemistry, dynamics) of extrasolar planets. The spectacular successes of ground-based…

Planetary transits provide a unique opportunity to investigate the surface distributions of star spots. Our aim is to determine if, with continuous observation (such as the data that will be provided by the Kepler mission), we can in…

Of the approximately 350 extrasolar planets currently known, of order 10% orbit evolved stars with radii R >~ 2.5 R_sun. These planets are of particular interest because they tend to orbit more massive hosts, and have been subjected to…

Context. CoRoT light curves have an unprecedented photometric quality, having simultaneously a high signal-to-noise ratio, a long time span and a nearly continuous duty-cycle. Aims. We analyse the light-curves of four bright targets…