Related papers: Tools for discovering and characterizing extrasola…
Transit and radial velocity searches are two techniques for identifying nearby extrasolar planets to Earth that transit bright stars. Identifying a robust sample of these exoplanets around bright stars for detailed atmospheric…
We propose a novel approach to utilize low-cadence photometric surveys for exoplanetary transit search. Even if transits are undetectable in the survey database alone, it can still be useful for finding preferred times for directed…
I derive the physical properties of 30 transiting extrasolar planetary systems using a homogeneous analysis of published data. The light curves are modelled with the JKTEBOP code, with attention paid to limb darkening and eccentricity. The…
Research into light curves from stars (temporal variation of brightness) has completely changed how exoplanets are discovered or characterised. This study including star light curves from the Kepler dataset as a way to discover exoplanets…
Transiting planet discoveries have yielded a plethora of information towards understanding the structure and atmospheres of extra-solar planets. These discoveries have been restricted to the short-period or low-periastron distance regimes…
Differential spectroscopy during exoplanet transits permits to reconstruct spectra of small stellar surface portions that successively become hidden behind the planet. The center-to-limb behavior of stellar line shapes, asymmetries and…
Astrophysical research into exoplanets has delivered thousands of confirmed planets orbiting distant stars. These planets span a wide ranges of size and composition, with diversity also being the hallmark of system configurations, the great…
The transit method, during which a planet's presence is inferred by measuring the reduction in flux as it passes in front of its parent star, is a highly successful exoplanet detection and characterization technique. During transit, the…
We investigate the improved detection of extrasolar planets around eclipsing binaries using eclipse minima timing, and extrasolar moons around transiting planets using transit timing, offered by the upcoming COROT (ESA, 2005), Kepler (NASA,…
Various techniques are being used to search for extra-solar planetary signatures, including accurate measurement of radial velocity and positional (astrometric) displacements, gravitational microlensing, and photometric transits. Planned…
This chapter reviews various methods of detecting planetary companions to stars from an observational perspective, focusing on radial velocities, astrometry, direct imaging, transits, and gravitational microlensing. For each method, this…
Precise physical properties of the known transiting exoplanets are essential for their precise atmospheric characterization using modern and upcoming instruments. Leveraging the large volume of high SNR photometric follow-up data from TESS,…
(Abridged) Space missions to search for exo-planets via the transit method, such as COROT, Eddington and Kepler, will need to address problems associated with the automated and efficient detection of planetary transits in light curves…
Moderately close binaries are a special class of targets for planet searches. From a theoretical standpoint, their hospitality to giant planets is uncertain and debated. From an observational standpoint, many of these systems present…
High contrast direct imaging of exoplanets can provide many important observables, including measurements of the orbit, spectra that probe the lower layers of the atmosphere, and phase variations of the planet, but cannot directly measure…
(Abridged) We discuss the design considerations of the EXPLORE (EXtra-solar PLanet Occultation REsearch) project, a series of transiting planet searches using 4-m-class telescopes to continuously monitor a single field of stars in the…
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…
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…
The derived physical properties of the known transiting extrasolar planetary systems come from a variety of sources, and are calculated using a range of different methods so are not always directly comparable. I present a catalogue of the…
Thueringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg (TLS) has started to operate a small dedicated telescope - the Tautenburg Exoplanet Search Telescope (TEST) - searching for transits of extrasolar planets in photometric time series observations. In a…