Related papers: Tools for discovering and characterizing extrasola…

Planets reflect and linearly polarize the radiation that they receive from their host stars. The emergent polarization is sensitive to aspects of the planet atmosphere such as the gas composition and the occurrence of condensates and their…

Microlensing offers a unique opportunity to probe exoplanets that are temperate and beyond the snow line, as small as Jovian satellites, at extragalactic distance, and even free floating exoplanets, regimes where the sensitivity of other…

There is an opportunity to advance both solar system and extrasolar planetary studies that does not require the construction of new telescopes or new missions but better use and access to inter-disciplinary data sets. This approach…

Exoplanets, short for `extra solar planets', are planets outside our solar system. They are objects with masses less than around 15 Jupiter-masses that orbit stars other than the Sun. They are small enough so they can not burn deuterium in…

The fields of astronomy and astrophysics are currently engaged in an unprecedented era of discovery as recent missions have revealed thousands of exoplanets orbiting other stars. While the Kepler Space Telescope mission has enabled most of…

We propose that the presence of additional planets in extrasolar planetary systems can be detected by long-term transit timing studies. If a transiting planet is on an eccentric orbit then the presence of another planet causes a secular…

Research in extrasolar-planet science is data-driven. With the advent of radial-velocity instruments like HARPS and HARPS-N, and transit space missions like Kepler, our ability to discover and characterise extrasolar planets is no longer…

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.…

Future surveys for transiting extrasolar planets, including the space-based mission Kepler (Borucki et al 2003), are expected to detect hundreds of Jovian mass planets and tens of terrestrial mass planets. For many of these newly discovered…

A variety of terrestrial planets with different physical parameters and exotic atmospheres might plausibly exist outside our Solar System, waiting to be detected by the next generation of space-exploration missions. Some of these planets…

Microlensing has recently proven to be a valuable tool to search for extrasolar planets of Neptune- to super-Earth-mass planets at orbits of few AU. Since planetary signals are of very short duration, an intense and continuous monitoring is…

This is a scientific strategy for the detection and characterization of extrasolar planets; that is, planets orbiting other stars. As such, it maps out over a 15-year horizon the techniques and capabilities required to detect and measure…

Direct measurements of the spectra of extrasolar giant planets are the keys to determining their physical and chemical nature. The goal of theory is to provide the tools and context with which such data are understood. It is only by putting…

Asteroseismology is among the most powerful observational tools to determine fundamental properties of stars. Space-based photometry has recently enabled the systematic detection of oscillations in exoplanet host stars, allowing a…

Since planets were first discovered outside our own Solar System in 1992 (around a pulsar) and in 1995 (around a main sequence star), extrasolar planet studies have become one of the most dynamic research fields in astronomy. Now that more…

Various methods have been proposed to search for extrasolar planets. Compared to the other methods, microlensing has unique applicabilities to the detections of Earth-mass and free-floating planets. However, the microlensing method is…

When we are fortunate enough to view an exoplanetary system nearly edge-on, the star and planet periodically eclipse each other. Observations of eclipses (transits and occultations) provide a bonanza of information that cannot be obtained…

Gravitational microlensing finds planets through their gravitational influence on the light coming from a more distant background star. The presence of the planet is then inferred from the tell-tale brightness variations of the background…

Precision infrared photometry from Spitzer has enabled the first direct studies of light from extrasolar planets, via observations at secondary eclipse in transiting systems. Current Spitzer results include the first longitudinal…

Never before has the detection and characterization of exoplanets via transit photometry been as promising and feasible as it is now, due to the increasing breadth and sensitivity of time domain optical surveys. Past works have made use of…