Related papers: ExoFit: Orbital Parameters of Extra-solar Planets …
This thesis focuses on the detection of extrasolar planets via the transit method, and more specifically addresses issues relevant to the preparation of upcoming space missions such as CoRoT, Kepler, Eddington, aiming to detect terrestrial…
We explored two aspects of the problem of characterizing cool extrasolar giant planets in scattered optical light with a space based coronagraph. First, for a number of the known radial velocity (RV) giants we computed traditional forward…
Given sparse or low-quality radial-velocity measurements of a star, there are often many qualitatively different stellar or exoplanet companion orbit models that are consistent with the data. The consequent multimodality of the likelihood…
We present a novel algorithm that is based on a Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) technique for performing robust profile analysis of a data cube from either single-dish or interferometric radio telescopes. It fits a set of models…
We have investigated the information content in reflected-starlight spectra of exoplanets. We specify our analysis to Barnard's Star b candidate super-Earth, for which we assume a radius 0.6 times that of Neptune, an atmosphere dominated by…
Many of the planets discovered via the radial velocity technique are hot Jupiters in 3-5 day orbits with ~10$% chance of transiting their parent star. However, radial velocity surveys for extra-solar planets generally require substantial…
Ground-based observing time is precious in the era of exoplanet follow-up and characterization, especially in high-precision radial velocity instruments. Blind-search radial velocity surveys thus require a dedicated observational strategy…
Motivated by the order-of-magnitude difference in the frequency of giant planets orbiting M dwarfs inferred by microlensing and radial velocity (RV) surveys, we present a method for comparing the statistical constraints on exoplanet…
Context: Exoplanets have now been proven to be very common. The number of its detections continues to grow following the development of better instruments and missions. One key step for the understanding of these worlds is their…
The orbital solutions of published multi-planet systems are not necessarily dynamically stable on timescales comparable to the lifetime of the system as a whole. For this reason, dynamical tests of the architectures of proposed exoplanetary…
The classical picture of our Solar System being the archetypal outcome of planet formation has been rendered obsolete by the astonishing diversity of extrasolar-system architectures. From rare hot-Jupiters to abundant super-Earths and…
The observed properties of transiting exoplanets are an exceptionally rich source of information that allows us to understand and characterize their physical properties. Unfortunately, only a relatively small fraction of the known…
There is a degeneracy in the radial velocity exoplanet signal between a single planet on an eccentric orbit and a two-planet system with a period ratio of 2:1. This degeneracy could lead to misunderstandings of the dynamical histories of…
We update the ephemerides of 16 transiting exoplanets using our ground-based observations, new TESS data, and previously published observations including those of amateur astronomers. All these light curves were modeled by making use of a…
The two most successful methods for exoplanet detection rely on the detection of planetary signals in photometric and radial velocity time-series. This depends on numerical techniques that exploit the synergy between data and theory to…
Direct imaging of widely separated exoplanets from space will obtain their reflected light spectra and measure atmospheric properties. Previous calculations have shown that a change in the orbital phase would cause a spectral signal, but…
We revisited ten known exoplanetary systems using publicly available data provided by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). The sample presented in this work consists of short period transiting exoplanets, with inflated radii…
When fitting transiting exoplanet lightcurves, it is usually desirable to have ranges and/or priors for the parameters which are to be retrieved that include our degree of knowledge (or ignorance) in the routines which are being used. In…
Many of exoplanetary systems consist of more than one planet and the study of planetary orbits with respect to their long-term stability is very interesting. Furthermore, many exoplanets seem to be locked in a mean-motion resonance (MMR),…
Context. We present precise radial-velocity measurements of five solar-type stars observed with the HARPS Echelle spectrograph mounted on the 3.6-m telescope in La Silla (ESO, Chile). With a time span of more than 10 years and a fairly…