Related papers: Measuring accurate transit parameters
Features in the distribution of exoplanet parameters by period demonstrate that the distribution of planet parameters is rich with information that can provide essential guidance to understanding planet histories. Structure has been found…
Exoplanets are now being discovered in profusion. However, to understand their character requires spectral models and data. These elements of remote sensing can yield temperatures, compositions, and even weather patterns, but only if…
Exoplanets, or planets outside our own solar system, have long been of interest to astronomers; however, only in the past two decades have scientists had the technology to characterize and study planets so far away from us. With advanced…
Long-period transiting exoplanets provide an opportunity to study the mass-radius relation and internal structure of extrasolar planets. Their studies grant insights into planetary evolution akin to the Solar System planets, which, in…
The Rossiter-McLaughlin effect occurs during a planet's transit. It provides the main means of measuring the sky-projected spin-orbit angle between a planet's orbital plane, and its host star's equatorial plane. Observing the…
Transits of bright stars offer a unique opportunity to study detailed properties of extrasolar planets that cannot be determined through radial-velocity observations. We propose a new technique to find such systems using all-sky…
In the context of the space-based mission CoRoT, devoted to asteroseismology and search for planet transits, we analyse the accuracy of fundamental stellar parameters (mass, radius, luminosity) that can be obtained from asteroseismological…
The field of exoplanets is quickly expanding from just the detection of new planets and the measurement of their most basic parameters, such as mass, radius and orbital configuration, to the first measurements of their atmospheric…
There are many competing theories and models describing the formation, migration and evolution of exoplanet systems. As both the precision with which we can characterize exoplanets and their host stars, and the number of systems for which…
There is a unique solution of the planet and star parameters from a planet transit light curve with two or more transits if the planet has a circular orbit and the light curve is observed in a band pass where limb darkening is negligible.…
As a planet transits the face of a star, it accelerates along the line-of-sight. The changing delay in the propagation of photons produces an apparent deceleration of the planet across the sky throughout the transit. This persistent…
We obtain full information on the orbital parameters by combining radial velocity and astrometric measurements by means of Bayesian inference. We sample the parameter probability densities of orbital model parameters with a Markov chain…
When we are fortunate enough to view an exoplanetary system nearly edge-on, the star and planet periodically eclipse each other. Observations of eclipses (transits and occultations) provide a bonanza of information that cannot be obtained…
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…
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…
Among the group of extrasolar planets, transiting planets provide a great opportunity to obtain direct measurements for the basic physical properties, such as mass and radius of these objects. These planets are therefore highly important in…
Transiting extrasolar planets provide an opportunity to study the mass-radius relation of planets as well as their internal structure. The existence of a secondary eclipse enables further study of the thermal properties of the the planet by…
Research into light curves from stars (temporal variation of brightness) has completely changed how exoplanets are discovered or characterised. This study including star light curves from the Kepler dataset as a way to discover exoplanets…
This paper reviews the basic technical characteristics of the ground-based photometric searches for transiting planets, and discusses a possible observational selection effect. I suggest that additional photometric observations of the…
Kepler will monitor enough stars that it is likely to detect single transits of planets with periods longer than the mission lifetime. We show that by combining the Kepler photometry of such transits with precise radial velocity (RV)…