Related papers: Transits and Occultations
I present an initial investigation into a new planet detection technique that uses the transit timing of a known, transiting planet. The transits of a solitary planet orbiting a star occur at equally spaced intervals in time. If a second…
I describe ongoing work on development of Bayesian methods for exploring periodically varying phenomena in astronomy, addressing two classes of sources: pulsars, and extrasolar planets (exoplanets). For pulsars, the methods aim to detect…
There are different methods for finding exoplanets such as radial spectral shifts, astrometrical measurements, transits, timing etc. Gravitational microlensing (including pixel-lensing) is among the most promising techniques with the…
Light refracted by the planet's atmosphere is usually ignored in analysis of planetary transits. Here we show that refraction can add shoulders to the transit light curve, i.e., an increase in the observed flux, mostly just before and after…
An important goal within the quest for detecting an Earth-like extrasolar planet, will be to identify atmospheric gaseous bio-signatures. Observations of the light transmitted through the Earth's atmosphere, as for an extrasolar planet,…
For extrasolar planets with orbital periods, P>10 days, radial velocity surveys find non-circular orbital eccentricities are common, <e>~0.3. Future surveys for extrasolar planets using the transit technique will also have sensitivity to…
Tidal interactions between short-period exoplanets and their host stars drive orbital decay and have likely led to engulfment of planets by their stars. Precise transit timing surveys, with baselines now spanning decades for some planets,…
The occurrence of a planet transiting in front of its host star offers the opportunity to observe the planet's atmosphere filtering starlight. The fraction of occulted stellar flux is roughly proportional to the optically thick area of the…
Hot giant exoplanets are very exotic objects with no equivalent in the Solar System that allow us to study the behavior of atmospheres under extreme conditions. Their thermal and chemical day--night dichotomies associated with extreme wind…
We present a way of searching for non-transiting exoplanets with dusty tails. In the transiting case, the extinction by dust during the transit removes more light from the beam than is scattered into it. Thus, the forward scattering…
Close, compact, hierarchical, multiple stellar systems, i.e., multiples having an outer orbital period from months to a few years, comprise a small, but continuously growing group of the triple and multiple star zoo. Many of them consist of…
Exoplanets are often found with short periods or high eccentricities, and multiple-planet systems are often in resonance. They require dynamical theories that describe more extreme motions than those of the relatively placid planetary…
The probability that an exoplanet transits its host star is high for planets in close orbits, but drops off rapidly for increasing semimajor axes. This makes transit surveys for planets with large semimajor axes orbiting bright stars…
There are many competing theories and models describing the formation, migration and evolution of exoplanet systems. As both the precision with which we can characterize exoplanets and their host stars, and the number of systems for which…
The observed light curves of most eclipsing binaries and stars with transiting planets can be well described and interpreted by current advanced physical models which also allow for the determination of many physical parameters of eclipsing…
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…
Exoplanet discoveries over recent years have shown that terrestrial planets are exceptionally common. Many of these planets are in compact systems that result in complex orbital dynamics. A key step toward determining the surface conditions…
The observed properties of transiting exoplanets are an exceptionally rich source of information that allows us to understand and characterize their physical properties. Unfortunately, only a relatively small fraction of the known…
Studying exoplanets with their parent stars is crucial to understand their population, formation and history. We review some of the key questions regarding their evolution with particular emphasis on giant gaseous exoplanets orbiting close…
Transmission spectroscopy during planetary transits is expected to be a major source of information on the atmospheres of small (approximately Earth-sized) exoplanets in the next two decades. This technique, however, is intrinsically…