Related papers: Detection of Extrasolar Planets by Gravitational M…
Magnetic fields play a crucial role in planetary evolution and habitability. While the intrinsic magnetic fields of solar system planets are relatively well understood, the magnetic properties of exoplanets remain largely unconstrained,…
We present the analysis of four candidate short duration binary microlensing events from the 2006-2007 MOA Project short event analysis. These events were discovered as a byproduct of an analysis designed to find short timescale single lens…
Space astrometry is capable of sub-microarcsecond measurements of star positions. A hundred visits over several years could yield relative astrometric precision of ~0.1 uas, below the astrometric signature (0.3 uas) of a Sun-Earth system at…
Although the extra-solar planets discovered so far are of the giant, gaseous, type, the increased sensitivity of future surveys will result in the discovery of lower mass planets. The detection of O2 in the atmosphere of a rocky extra-solar…
Gravitational microlensing is a new technique for studying the surfaces of distant stars. A point mass lens, usually a low-mass star from the disk, will typically resolve the surface of a red giant in the Galactic bulge, as well as amplify…
We present the first microlensing candidate for a free-floating exoplanet-exomoon system, MOA-2011-BLG-262, with a primary lens mass of M_host ~ 4 Jupiter masses hosting a sub-Earth mass moon. The data are well fit by this exomoon model,…
Terrestrial planetary systems may exist around nearby stars as the Earth-sized counterparts to the many giant planets already discovered within the solar neighborhood. In this chapter we first discuss the numerous techniques which have been…
Over the past three decades instruments on the ground and in space have discovered thousands of planets outside the solar system. These observations have given rise to an astonishingly detailed picture of the demographics of short-period…
We propose a direct method to detect close-in giant planets orbiting stars in the Galactic bulge. This method uses caustic-crossing binary microlensing events discovered by survey teams monitoring the bulge to measure light from a planet…
The extrasolar system OGLE-2006-BLG-109L is the first multiple-planet system to be discovered by gravitational microlensing (Gaudi et al., 2008); the two large planets that have been detected have mass ratios, semimajor axis ratios, and…
Astrometry is a powerful technique to study the populations of extrasolar planets around nearby stars. It gives access to a unique parameter space and is therefore required for obtaining a comprehensive picture of the properties,…
Close-in extrasolar giant planets may be directly detectable by their reflected light, due to the proximity of the planet to the illuminating star. The spectrum of the system will contain a reflected light component that varies in amplitude…
We report the discovery of a planetary system from observation of the high-magnification microlensing event OGLE-2012-BLG-0026. The lensing light curve exhibits a complex central perturbation with multiple features. We find that the…
The gravitational influence of a planet on a nearby disk provides a powerful tool for detecting and studying extrasolar planetary systems. Here we demonstrate that gaps can be opened in dynamically cold debris disks at the mean-motion…
Studies of transiting extra-solar planets are of key importance for understanding the nature of planets outside our Solar System, because their densities can be determined, constraining of what the planets are made of. Using the data…
The rapid analysis of ongoing gravitational microlensing events has been integral to the successful detection and characterisation of cool planets orbiting low mass stars in the Galaxy. In this paper we present an implementation of search…
The probability of detecting a planetary companion of a lensing star during a microlensing event toward the Galactic center, averaged over all relevant event and galactic parameters, when the planet-star mass ratio $q=0.001$ has a maximum…
Gravitational microlensing is a robust tool to detect and directly measure the abundance and mass of any kind of compact objects, either in our galaxy or in the extragalatic domain. On basis to generic, broadly applicable arguments, it is…
Over 300 extrasolar planets (exoplanets) have been detected orbiting nearby stars. We now hope to conduct a census of all planets around nearby stars and to characterize their atmospheres and surfaces with spectroscopy. Rocky planets within…
With over 1800 planets discovered outside of the Solar System in the past two decades, the field of exoplanetology has broadened our perspective on planetary systems. Research priorities are now moving from planet detection to planet…