Related papers: Dynamics of the TrES-2 system
Most detected transiting planets have orbits which would fit within the one of Mercury, exposing them to intense stellar irradiation and interactions that significantly alter their properties. In contrast, colder planets with longer orbital…
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…
Transiting planets manifest themselves by a periodic dimming of their host star by a fixed amount. On the other hand, light curves of transiting circumbinary (CB) planets are expected to be neither periodic nor to have a single depth while…
A simple question of celestial mechanics is investigated: in what regions of phase space near a binary system can planets persist for long times? The planets are taken to be test particles moving in the field of an eccentric binary system.…
We study the orbital architecture of multi-planet systems detected by the Kepler transit mission using N-body simulations, focusing on the orbital spacing between adjacent planets in systems showing four or more transiting planets. We find…
From the numerous detected planets outside the Solar system, no terrestrial planet comparable to our Earth has been discovered so far. The search for an Exo-Earth is certainly a big challenge which may require the detections of planetary…
We report a possible change in the orbit parameters of the TrES-2 exoplanet. With a period of 2.470621 days, the TrES-2 exoplanet exhibits almost "grazing" transits 110.4 minutes duration as measured in 2006 by Holman and collaborators. We…
A large proportion of transiting planetary systems appear to possess only a single planet as opposed to multiple transiting planets. This excess of singles is indicative of significant mutual inclinations existing within a large number of…
Following the discovery that asteroid (3753) Cruithne was a coorbital companion of the Earth, a new theory of coorbital motion has been developed whereby planets or satellites can maintain companion objects in the same orbit as themselves.…
Prior to the 1990s, speculations about the occurrence of planets around other stars were based only on planet formation theory, observations of circumstellar disks, and the knowledge that at least one seemingly ordinary star is the host of…
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…
Determining the orbital eccentricity of an extrasolar planet is critically important for understanding the system's dynamical environment and history. However, eccentricity is often poorly determined or entirely mischaracterized due to poor…
This paper considers whether the population of known transiting exoplanets provides evidence for additional outer planets on inclined orbits, due to the perturbing effect of such planets on the orbits of inner planets. As such, we develop a…
Two consecutive transits of planetary companion OGLE-TR-111b were observed in the I band. Combining these observations with data from the literature, we find that the timing of the transits cannot be explained by a constant period, and that…
A survey of currently known planet-hosting stars indicates that approximately 25% of extrasolar planetary systems are within dual-star environments. Several of these systems contain stellar companions on moderately close orbits, implying…
We describe the circumstances that led to the discovery of Kepler-36b, and the subsequent characterization of its host planetary system. The Kepler-36 system is remarkable for its physical properties: the close separation of the planets,…
K2-19 is the second multi-planetary system discovered with K2 observations. The system is composed of two Neptune size planets close to the 3:2 mean-motion resonance. To better characterise the system we obtained two additional transit…
A transiting planetary system was discovered independently by two groups, under the names WASP-86 (Faedi et al. 2016) and KELT-12 (Stevens et al. 2017). The properties of the system determined in these works were very different, most…
Straight-forward derivation of planetary parameters can only be achieved in transiting planetary systems. However, planetary attributes such as radius and mass strongly depend on stellar host parameters. Discovering a transit host star to…
We present Spitzer Space Telescope infrared photometric time series of the transiting extrasolar planet system TrES-1. The data span a predicted time of secondary eclipse, corresponding to the passage of the planet behind the star. In both…