Related papers: The Detectability of Transit Depth Variations due …
We use a planetary albedo model to investigate variations in visible wavelength phase curves of exoplanets. The presence of clouds on these exoplanets significantly alters their planetary albedo spectra. We confirm that non-uniform cloud…
The transit method is one of the most relevant exoplanet detection techniques, which consists of detecting periodic eclipses in the light curves of stars. This is not always easy due to the presence of noise in the light curves, which is…
In this work, using the simulator VPLanet, we analyze the spin evolution of some selected exoplanets due to the tidal interaction with their host star. For a rocky planet, two spin conditions are possible, the trapped rotation and the fast…
Here we describe a story behind the discovery of Kepler-46, which was the first exoplanetary system detected and characterized from a method known as the transit timing variations (TTVs). The TTV method relies on the gravitational…
The rotation of a star and the revolutions of its planets are not necessarily aligned. This article reviews the measurement techniques, key findings, and theoretical interpretations related to the obliquities (spin-orbit angles) of…
Many of the directly imaged self-luminous gas giant exoplanets have been found to have cloudy atmospheres. Scattering of the emergent thermal radiation from these planets by the dust grains in their atmospheres should locally give rise to…
We search for transits around all known pulsating {\delta} Sct variables (6500 K < Teff < 10 000 K) in the long-cadence Kepler data after subtracting the pulsation signal through an automated routine. To achieve this, we devise a simple and…
Planet obliquity is the alignment or misalignment of a planet spin axis relative to its orbit normal. In a multiplanet system, this obliquity is a valuable signature of planet formation and evolutionary history. The young $\beta$ Pictoris…
The depth of an exoplanetary transit in the light curve of a distant star is commonly approximated as the squared planet-to-star radius ratio, (R_p/R_s)^2. Stellar limb darkening, however, results in significantly deeper transits. Here we…
Ground-based searches for transiting Jupiter-sized planets have so far produced few detections of planets, but many of stellar systems with eclipse depths, durations, and orbital periods that resemble those expected from planets. I show…
Refraction deflects photons that pass through atmospheres, which affects transit light curves. Refraction thus provides an avenue to probe physical properties of exoplanet atmospheres and to constrain the presence of clouds and hazes. In…
Transiting planet discoveries have yielded a plethora of information regarding the internal structure and atmospheres of extra-solar planets. These discoveries have been restricted to the low-periastron distance regime due to the bias…
We present new ways to identify single and multiple moons around extrasolar planets using planetary transit timing variations (TTVs) and transit duration variations (TDVs). For planets with one moon, measurements from successive transits…
Transiting planets manifest themselves by a periodic dimming of their host star by a fixed amount. On the other hand, light curves of transiting circumbinary (CB) planets are expected to be neither periodic nor to have a single depth while…
In our solar system massive outer planets dominate in terms of both mass and angular momentum, but few such planets are among the more than 4000 currently confirmed exoplanets, and none of these have accurately determined densities. Here I…
We examine Kepler light curve variability on habitable zone transit timescales for a large uniform sample of spectroscopically studied Kepler exoplanet host stars. The stars, taken from Everett et al. (2013) are solar-like in their…
Transmission spectroscopy is a promising tool for the atmospheric characterization of transiting exoplanets. Because the planetary signal is faint, discrepancies have been reported regarding individual targets. We investigate the dependence…
We predict how a remote observer would see the brightness variations of giant planets similar to Jupiter and Saturn as they orbit their central stars. We model the geometry of Jupiter, Saturn and Saturn's rings for varying orbital and…
We examine the ability of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) to detect and improve our understanding of planetary systems in the Kepler field. By modeling the expected transits of all confirmed and candidate planets detected…
If a transiting exoplanet has a moon, that moon could be detected directly from the transit it produces itself, or indirectly via the transit timing variations it produces in its parent planet. There is a range of parameter space where the…