Related papers: Detecting Transits in Sparsely Sampled Surveys
We present detailed simulations of the Pan-STARRS-1 (PS1) multi-epoch, multi-band 3-pi Survey in order to assess its potential yield of transiting planets and eclipsing binaries. This survey differs from dedicated transit surveys in that it…
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…
We describe a project (transitsearch.org) currently attempting to discover transiting intermediate-period planets orbiting bright parent stars, and we simulate that project's performance. The discovery of such a transit would be an…
Because the planets of a system form in a flattened disk, they are expected to share similar orbital inclinations at the end of their formation. The high-precision photometric monitoring of stars known to host a transiting planet could thus…
We analyze the properties of searches devoted to finding planetary transits by observing simple stellar systems, such as globular clusters, open clusters, and the Galactic bulge. We develop the analytic tools necessary to predict the number…
We investigate an in-situ formation scenario for Earth-mass terrestrial planets in short-period, potentially habitable orbits around low-mass stars (M_star < 0.3 M_sun). We then investigate the feasibility of detecting these Earth-sized…
In the effort to characterize the masses, radii, and atmospheres of potentially habitable exoplanets, there is an urgent need to find examples of such planets transiting nearby M dwarfs. The MEarth Project is an ongoing effort to do so, as…
Previous work has demonstrated that the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) has the capability to detect transiting planets around main sequence stars in relatively short ($<$ 20 days) periods and using standard algorithms for transit…
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) has been designed in order to satisfy several different scientific objectives that can be addressed by a ten-year synoptic sky survey. However, LSST will also provide a large amount of data that…
Star clusters provide an excellent opportunity to study the role of environment on determining the frequencies of short period planets. They provide a large sample of stars which can be imaged simultaneously, with a common distance, age and…
I present an initial investigation into a new planet detection technique that uses the transit timing of a known, transiting planet. The transits of a solitary planet orbiting a star occur at equally spaced intervals in time. If a second…
Earth-sized exoplanets that transit nearby, late spectral type red dwarfs will be prime targets for atmospheric characterization in the coming decade. Such systems, however, are difficult to find via wide-field transit surveys like Kepler…
Doppler and transit surveys are finding extrasolar planets of ever smaller mass and radius, and are now sampling the domain of superEarths (1-3 Earth radii). Recent results from the Doppler surveys suggest that discovery of a transiting…
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…
The yields from transit surveys can be used to constrain the frequency and statistical properties of extrasolar planets. Conversely, planet frequencies can be used to estimate expected detection rates, which are critical for the planning…
Using Monte Carlo simulations we analyze the potential of the upcoming transit survey Pan-Planets. The analysis covers the simulation of realistic light curves (including the effects of ingress/egress and limb-darkening) with both…
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will photometrically monitor approximately 1 billion stars for ten years. The resulting light curves can be used to detect transiting exoplanets. In particular, as demonstrated by Lund et al.…
Compared to bright star searches, surveys for transiting planets against fainter (V=12-18) stars have the advantage of much higher sky densities of dwarf star primaries, which afford easier detection of small transiting bodies. Furthermore,…
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…
Radial velocity searches for extrasolar planets have recently detected several very low mass (7-20M_Earth) planets in close orbits with periods <10 days. We consider the prospects for detecting the analogs of these planets in Galactic open…