Related papers: New Worlds: Evaluating terrestrial planets as astr…
As the number of detected extrasolar planets increases, exoplanet databases become a valuable resource, confirming some details about planetary formation, but also challenging our theories with new unexpected properties.
Although there is abundant and diverse observational evidence in support of white dwarf stars hosting planets or debris disks which form in the catastrophic destruction of various planetary bodies, the key processes that explain these…
For the first time in human history the possibility of detecting and studying Earth-like planets is on the horizon. Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF), with a launch date in the 2015 timeframe, is being planned by NASA to find and characterize…
Exoplanetary science is among the fastest evolving fields of today's astronomical research. Ground-based planet-hunting surveys alongside dedicated space missions (Kepler, CoRoT) are delivering an ever-increasing number of exoplanets, now…
We outline the important role that ground-based, Doppler monitoring of exoplanetary systems will play in advancing our theories of planet formation and dynamical evolution. A census of planetary systems requires a well designed survey to be…
One of the most exciting scientific challenges is to detect Earth-like planets in the habitable zones of other stars in the galaxy and search for evidence of life. The ability to observe and characterise dozens of potentially Earth-like…
The characterization of exoplanetary atmospheres has come of age in the last decade, as astronomical techniques now allow for albedos, chemical abundances, temperature profiles and maps, rotation periods and even wind speeds to be measured.…
The circumplanetary environments in our Solar System host a stunning array of moon and ring systems. Study of these environs has yielded valuable insights into planetary system formation and evolution, and there is every reason to believe…
I review the characteristics of planetary systems accessible to imaging. I show that, beyond the basic angular resolution and dynamics performances of an optical ``architecture'', other performances such as photometric precision, spectral…
Models of terrestrial planet formation in the presence of a migrating giant planet have challenged the notion that hot-Jupiter systems lack terrestrial planets. We briefly review this issue and suggest that hot-Jupiter systems should be…
Today, we know ~4330 exoplanets orbiting their host stars in ~3200 planetary systems. The diversity of these exoplanets is large, and none of the known exoplanets is a twin to any of the solar system planets, nor is any of the known…
Thousands of planets beyond our solar system have been discovered to date, dozens of which are rocky in composition and are orbiting within the circumstellar habitable zone of their host star. The next frontier in life detection beyond our…
This chapter begins with some basic concepts regarding the structure and mineralogy of rocky planets, how to read and construct ternary diagrams, and why partial melting occurs when plate tectonics is operative. Partial melting is a key…
Transiting planet discoveries have largely been restricted to the short-period or low-periastron distance regimes due to the bias inherent in the geometric transit probability. Through the refinement of planetary orbital parameters, and…
Recently, many Earth-sized planets have been discovered around stars other than the Sun that might possess appropriate conditions for life. The development of theoretical methods for assessing the putative habitability of these worlds is of…
Comets, asteroids and moons that orbit stars and planets exterior to our solar system are prefixed with "exo". While the existence of these objects is certain, our understanding of their physical properties, composition, and diversity is…
Transiting extrasolar planets are extraordinarily valuable for understanding the characteristics and formation of planets, because they are the only exoplanets whose physical and orbital properties can be measured to high precision.…
The search for extrasolar planets has developed rapidly and, today, more than 1700 planets have been found orbiting stars. Thanks to Gaia, we will collect high-accuracy astrometric orbits of thousands of new low-mass celestial objects, such…
With thousands of exoplanets now identified, the characterization of habitable planets and the potential identification of inhabited ones is a major challenge for the coming decades. We review the current working definition of habitable…
Terrestrial planets may be detected using the gravitational microlensing technique. This was demonstrated in the high magnification event MACHO-98-BLG-35. Observing strategies aimed at measuring the abundance of terrestrial planets are…