Related papers: On the Transits of Solar System Objects in the For…
We study the effect of extragalactic point sources on satellite observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). In order to separate the contributions due to different foreground components, a maximum-entropy method is applied to…
Microlensing has proven to be a valuable tool to search for extrasolar planets of Jovian- to Super-Earth-mass planets at orbits of a few AU. Since planetary signals are of very short duration, an intense and continuous monitoring is…
While it may seem counterintuitive that X-ray astronomy should give any insights into low-temperature planetary systems, planets orbit stars whose magnetized surfaces divert a small fraction of the stellar energy into high energy products:…
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,…
An accurate forecast of flare and CME initiation requires precise measurements of the magnetic energy build up and release in the active regions of the solar atmosphere. We designed a new space weather mission that performs such…
For high-precision cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments, contamination from extragalactic point sources is a major concern. It is therefore useful to be able to detect and discard point source contaminated pixels using the map…
The PLANCK mission is the most sensitive all-sky CMB experiment currently planned. The High Frequency Instrument (HFI) will be especially suited for observing clusters of galaxies by their thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect. In order to…
This paper discusses the Cosmic Background (CB) dipoles observations in the framework of the Planck mission. Dipoles observations can be used in three ways: (i) It gives a measurement of the peculiar velocity of our Galaxy which is an…
The Planck Collaboration has recently released maps of the microwave sky in both temperature and polarization. Diffuse astrophysical components (including Galactic emissions, cosmic far infrared (IR) background, y-maps of the thermal…
During the months when the galactic bulge is visible from the southern hemisphere, there are typically about 8 to 10 on-going microlensing events at any given time. If the lensing stars have planets around them, then the signature of the…
We review estimates of small scale fluctuations due to extragalactic point sources in the Planck Surveyor frequency bands. While our undestanding of the spectral and evolutionary properties of these sources is far from complete,…
The exploration of the time-variable astronomical sky at submm wavelengths is rapidly becoming more feasible with large sky surveys by Cosmic Microwave Background telescopes with tens of thousands of detectors. Observations with the Atacama…
Extra-solar planets can be efficiently detected in gravitational microlensing events of high magnification. High accuracy photometry is required over a short, well-defined time interval only, of order 10-30 hours. Most planets orbiting the…
Due to the exquisite photometric precision, transiting exoplanet discoveries from the Kepler mission are enabling several new techniques of confirmation and characterization. One of these newly accessible techniques analyzes the phase…
The Earth's magnetosphere is formed as a consequence of interaction between the planet's magnetic field and the solar wind, a continuous plasma stream from the Sun. A number of different solar wind phenomena have been studied over the past…
We analyze the polarization properties of the tilted off-axis dual-reflector submillimeter-wave telescope on the ESA PLANCK Surveyor designed for measuring the temperature anisotropies and polarization characteristics of the cosmic…
Using precise full-sky observations from Planck, and applying several methods of component separation, we identify and characterize the emission from the Galactic "haze" at microwave wavelengths. The haze is a distinct component of diffuse…
The next generation of Cosmic Microwave Background experiments will produce cosmic variance limited observations over a large fraction of sky and for a large range of multipoles. In this work we discuss different consistency tests that can…
The WFIRST microlensing mission will measure precise light curves and relative parallaxes for millions of stars, giving it the potential to characterize short-period transiting planets all along the line of sight and into the galactic…
Future surveys for transiting extrasolar planets, including the space-based mission Kepler (Borucki et al 2003), are expected to detect hundreds of Jovian mass planets and tens of terrestrial mass planets. For many of these newly discovered…