Related papers: Astrometric Detection of Earthlike Planets
One important strength of the microlensing method in detecting extrasolar planets is its high sensitivity to low-mass planets. However, it is often believed that microlensing detections of Earth-mass planets from ground-based observation…
We demonstrate that gravitational lensing can be used to discover and study planets in the habitable zones of nearby dwarf stars. If appropriate software is developed, a new generation of monitoring programs will automatically conduct a…
With the recent discoveries of hundreds of extrasolar planets, the search for planets like Earth and life in the universe, is quickly gaining momentum. In the future, large space observatories could directly detect the light scattered from…
We propose a method to detect exoplanets based on their host star's intensity centroid after it passes thru a vortex filter. Based on our calculations with planets in face-on orbits, exoplanets with relative proximity to their host stars…
With about 700 confirmed extrasolar planets, it is time to move beyond discovery and towards characterization. Perhaps the most basic parameter of an extrasolar planet is its mass; however, this is very difficult to determine if the planet…
Astrometric and radial-velocity planet detections track very similar motions, and one generally expects that the statistical properties of the detections would also be similar after they are scaled to the signal-to-noise ratio of the…
To date, a handful of exoplanets have been photometrically mapped using phase-modulated reflection or emission from their surfaces, but the small amplitudes of such signals have limited previous maps almost exclusively to coarse dipolar…
Microlensing is the most promising method to study the statistical frequency of extra-solar planets orbiting typical (random) stars in the Milky Way, even those several kiloparsecs from Earth. The lensing zone corresponds to orbital…
Three planets with minimum masses less than 10 Earth masses orbit the star HD 40307, suggesting these planets may be rocky. However, with only radial velocity data, it is impossible to determine if these planets are rocky or gaseous. Here…
Understanding the surface and atmospheric conditions of Earth-size, rocky planets in the habitable zones (HZs) of low-mass stars is currently one of the greatest astronomical endeavors. Knowledge of the planetary effective surface…
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…
We have shown that Earth-mass planets could survive in variously restricted regions of the habitable zones (HZs) of most of a sample of nine of the 93 main-sequence exoplanetary systems confirmed by May 2003. In a preliminary extrapolation…
High-precision astrometry can identify exoplanets and measure their orbits and masses, while coronagraphic imaging enables detailed characterization of their physical properties and atmospheric compositions through spectroscopy. In a…
Giant planets are expected to form at orbital radii that are relatively large compared to transit and radial velocity detections (>1 AU). As a result, giant planet formation is best observed through direct imaging. By simulating the…
The quest for atmospheric spectral signatures that may witness biological activity in exoplanets is focused on rocky planets. The best targets for future, challenging spectroscopic observations will be selected among potentially habitable…
Searches for planets via gravitational lensing have focused on cases in which the projected separation, a, between planet and star is comparable to the Einstein radius, R_E. This paper considers smaller orbital separations and demonstrates…
Terrestrial planets in temperate orbits around very low mass stars are likely to have evolved in a very different way than solar system planets, and in particular Earth. However, because these are the first planets that are and will be…
The study of stellar oscillations - asteroseismology - has revolutionized our understanding of the physical properties of the Sun, and similar potential for other stars has been demonstrated in recent years. In particular, asteroseismic…
More than 450 exoplanets are known and this number increases nearly every day. Only a few constraints on their orbital parameters and physical characteristics can be determined, as most exoplanets are detected indirectly. Measuring the…
The physical characterization of exoplanets will require to take spectra at several orbital positions. For that purpose, a direct imaging capability is necessary. Direct imaging requires an efficient stellar suppression mechanism,…