Related papers: Methods for exomoon characterisation: combining tr…
The field of exoplanetary science has diversified rapidly over recent years as the field has progressed from exoplanet detection to exoplanet characterization. For those planets known to transit, the primary transit and secondary eclipse…
Before an exoplanet transit, atmospheric refraction bends light into the line of sight of an observer. The refracted light forms a stellar mirage, a distorted secondary image of the host star. I model this phenomenon and the resultant…
Aims. Current and upcoming space missions may be able to detect moons of transiting extra-solar planets. In this context it is important to understand if exomoons are expected to exist and what their possible properties are. Methods. Using…
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…
From simulations of transit observations, it is found that the detectability of extrasolar planets depends only on two parameters: The signal-to-noise ratio during a transit, and the number of data points observed during transits. All other…
We report on the results from the radial-velocity follow-up program performed to establish the planetary nature and to characterize the transiting candidates discovered by the space mission CoRoT. We use the SOPHIE at OHP, HARPS at ESO and…
Photometry of short-period planetary systems allows astronomers to monitor exoplanets, their host stars, and their mutual interactions. In addition to the transits of a planet in front of its star and the eclipses of the planet by its star,…
Surveys for exoplanetary transits are usually limited not by photon noise but rather by the amount of red noise in their data. In particular, although the CoRoT spacebased survey data are being carefully scrutinized, significant new sources…
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 present theoretical predictions for photometric and spectroscopic signatures of rings around transiting extrasolar planets. On the basis of a general formulation for the transiting signature in the stellar light curve and the velocity…
It is shown herein that planets with eccentric orbits are more likely to transit than circularly orbiting planets with the same semimajor axis by a factor of (1-e^2)^{-1}. If the orbital parameters of discovered transiting planets are…
The formation of satellites is thought to be a natural by-product of planet formation in our Solar System, and thus, moons of extrasolar planets (exomoons) may be abundant in extrasolar planetary systems, as well. Exomoons have yet to be…
The measurement of the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect for transiting exoplanets places constraints on the orientation of the orbital axis with respect to the stellar spin axis, which can shed light on the mechanisms shaping the orbital…
Microlensing is most sensitive to binary lenses with relatively large orbital separations, and as such, typical binary microlensing events show little or no orbital motion during the event. However, despite the strength of binary…
Kepler will monitor a sufficient number of stars that it is likely to detect single transits of planets with periods longer than the mission lifetime. We show that by combining the exquisite Kepler photometry of such transits with precise…
We report on a multi-wavelength observational campaign which followed the Earth's transit on the Sun as seen from Jupiter on 5 Jan the 2014. Simultaneous observations of Jupiter's moons Europa and Ganymede obtained with HARPS from La Silla,…
When observing the atmospheres of transiting exoplanets using high-resolution spectroscopy, one aims to detect well-resolved spectral features with high signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) as is possible today with modern spectrographs. However,…
The discovery of an exomoon would provide deep insights into planet formation and the habitability of planetary systems, with transiting examples being particularly sought after. Of the hundreds of Kepler planets now discovered, the…
Space weathering is an important surface process occurring on the Moon and other airless bodies, especially those that have no magnetic field. The optical effects of the Moon's space weathering have been largely investigated in the…
This paper shows how the exposure of the Moon to the Earth's plasmasheet is subject to decadal variations due to lunar precession. The latter is a key property of the Moon's apparent orbit around the Earth - the nodes of that orbit precess…