Related papers: Tools for discovering and characterizing extrasola…
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…
The initial task that confronted extrasolar-planet transit surveys was to monitor enough stars with sufficient photometric precision and complete phase coverage. Numerous searches have been pursued over the last few years. Among these…
The study of extrasolar planets has rapidly expanded to encompass the search for new planets, measurements of sizes and masses, models of planetary interiors, planetary demographics and occurrence frequencies, the characterization of…
Currently, over forty transiting planets have been discovered by ground-based photometric surveys, and space-based missions like Kepler and CoRoT are expected to detect hundreds more. Follow-up photometric observations from the ground will…
For much of human history we have wondered how our solar system formed, and whether there are any other planets like ours around other stars. Only in the last 20 years have we had direct evidence for the existence of exoplanets, with the…
When extrasolar planets are observed to transit their parent stars, we are granted unprecedented access to their physical properties. It is only for transiting planets that we are permitted direct estimates of the planetary masses and…
The discovery of rings around extrasolar planets ("exorings") is one of the next breakthroughs in exoplanetary research. Previous studies have explored the feasibility of detecting exorings with present and future photometric sensitivities…
This paper is to introduce an online tool for the prediction of exoplanet transit light curves. Small telescopes can readily capture exoplanet transits under good weather conditions when the combination of a bright star and a large…
Space-based photometric surveys have discovered large numbers of planets transiting other stars, but these observe in a single band-pass and yield only the planet radius, orbital period, and transit duration. Information on the masses,…
One of the persistent complications in searches for transiting exoplanets is the low percentage of the detected candidates that ultimately prove to be planets, which significantly increases the load on the telescopes used for the follow-up…
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…
Microlensing is a proven extrasolar planet search method that has already yielded the detection of four exoplanets. These detections have changed our understanding of planet formation ``beyond the snowline'' by demonstrating that…
We show that a space-based gravitational microlensing survey for terrestrial extra-solar planets is feasible in the near future, and could provide a nearly complete picture of the properties of planetary systems in our Galaxy. We present…
The most successful method used so far to search for extrasolar planets is the radial velocity technique, where periodical shifts on the measured emission from a star provide evidence for an orbiting planet. This method has been used on…
Extra-solar planets can be efficiently detected in gravitational microlensing events of high magnification. High accuracy photometry is required over a short, well-defined time interval only, of order 10-30 hours. Most planets orbiting the…
The majority of exoplanets found to date have been discovered via the transit method, and transmission spectroscopy represents the primary method of studying these distant worlds. Currently, in-depth atmospheric characterization of…
We propose a method for observing transiting exoplanets with near-infrared high-resolution spectrometers. We aim to create a robust data analysis method for recovering atmospheric transmission spectra from transiting exoplanets over a wide…
Transiting exoplanets provide detailed access to their atmospheres, as the planet's signal can be effectively separated from that of its host star. For transiting exoplanets three fundamental atmospheric measurements are possible:…
I present an homogeneous determination of the physical properties of 14 transiting extrasolar planetary systems for which good data are available. The input quantities for each system are the results of the light curve analyses (Paper 1),…
The Wide Field Camera Transit Survey is a pioneer program aimed to search for extra-solar planets in the near-infrared. The standard data reduction pipeline of the program uses aperture photometry to construct the light curves. We…