Related papers: Naming the extrasolar planets
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…
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…
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 102 main-sequence exoplanetary systems confirmed by 25 September 2003. In a preliminary…
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…
We use both the conventional and more recently developed methods of cluster analysis to study the data of extra-solar planets. Using the data set with planetary mass M, orbital period P, and orbital eccentricity e, we investigate the…
Since very recently, we acquired knowledge on the existence of comets in extrasolar planetary systems. The formation of comets together with planets around host stars now seems evident. As stars are often born in clusters of interstellar…
Earth is the only planet known to harbor life and, as a result, the search for habitable and inhabited planets beyond the Solar System commonly focuses on analogs to our planet. However, Earth's atmosphere and surface environment have…
Studying the internal structure of exoplanet-host stars compared to that of similar stars without detected planets is particularly important for the understanding of planetary formation. The observed average overmetallicity of stars with…
The equilibrium rotation of tidally evolved "Earth-like" extra-solar planets is often assumed to be synchronous with their orbital mean motion. The same assumption persisted for Mercury and Venus until radar observations revealed their true…
One notable example of exoplanet diversity is the population of circumbinary planets, which orbit around both stars of a binary star system. There are so far only 16 known circumbinary exoplanets, all of which lie in the same orbital plane…
It has been hypothesized that the presence of closely orbiting giant planets is associated with enhanced chromospheric emission of their host stars. The main cause for such a relation would likely be enhanced dynamo action induced by the…
We have found many Earth-sized worlds but we have no way of determining if their surfaces are Earth-like. This makes it impossible to quantitatively compare habitability, and pretending we can risks damaging the field.
Extrasolar planetary host stars are enriched in key planet-building elements. These enrichments have the potential to drastically alter the building blocks available for terrestrial planet formation. Here we report on the combination of…
We show that terrestrial planets could survive in variously restricted regions of the habitable zones of 47 Ursae Majoris, Epsilon Eridani, and Rho Coronae Borealis, but nowhere in the habitable zones of Gliese 876 and Upsilon Andromedae.…
Searching the literature, we found 25 stars with directly imaged planets and candidates. We gathered photometric and spectral information for all these objects to derive their luminosities in a homogeneous way, taking a bolometric…
We have reconstructed the galactic orbits of the parent stars of exoplanets. For comparison, we have recalculated the galactic orbits of stars from the Edvardsson et al.(1993) catalog. A comparison between the two samples indicates that…
The search for habitable planets, and even for ``Earth 2.0'', is a major driver in contemporary astronomy. However selecting target fields to prioritise for such searches presents a challenge. Here we establish a statistical analysis of the…
Clouds also form in atmospheres of planets that orbit other stars than our Sun, in so-called extrasolar planets or exoplanets. Exoplanet atmospheres can be chemically extremely rich. Exoplanet clouds are therefor made of a mix of materials…
The findings of more than 350 extrasolar planets, most of them nontransiting Hot Jupiters, have revealed correlations between the metallicity of the main-sequence (MS) host stars and planetary incidence. This connection can be used to…
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…