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NASA's Kepler Space Telescope was designed to determine the frequency of Earth-sized planets orbiting Sun-like stars, but these planets are on the very edge of the mission's detection sensitivity. Accurately determining the occurrence rate…
Astronomy is at times a science of unexpected discovery. When it is, and if we are lucky, new intellectual territories emerge to challenge our views of the cosmos. The recent indirect detections using high-precision Doppler spectroscopy of…
Pulsar timing is a promising technique for detecting low frequency sources of gravitational waves. Historically the focus has been on the detection of diffuse stochastic backgrounds, such as those formed from the superposition of weak…
The unparalleled photometric data obtained by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope has led to improved understanding of red-giant stars and binary stars. We discuss the characterization of known eccentric system, containing a solar-like…
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…
The CoRoT and Kepler space missions have detected oscillations in hundreds of Sun-like stars and thousands of field red-giant stars. This has opened the door to a new era of stellar population studies in the Milky Way. We report on the…
The unparalleled photometric data obtained by NASA's Kepler space telescope led to an improved understanding of red giant stars and binary stars. Seismology allows us to constrain the properties of red giants. In addition to eclipsing…
Most detected transiting planets have orbits which would fit within the one of Mercury, exposing them to intense stellar irradiation and interactions that significantly alter their properties. In contrast, colder planets with longer orbital…
We examined which exo-systems contain moons that may be detected in transit. We numerically modeled transit light curves of Earth-like and giant planets that cointain moons with 0.005--0.4 Earth-mass. The orbital parameters were randomly…
Stellar surface processes represent a fundamental limit to the detection of extrasolar planets with the currently most heavily-used techniques. As such, considerable effort has gone into trying to mitigate the impact of these processes on…
We consider the possibility of detecting and tracking the hypothesized Planet 9 or other unknown planetary-mass distant solar system members, generically called Planet X, with a combination of CMB and optical imaging surveys. Planets are…
We describe work in progress by a collaboration of astronomers and statisticians developing a suite of Bayesian data analysis tools for extrasolar planet (exoplanet) detection, planetary orbit estimation, and adaptive scheduling of…
Experience in exploring our own solar system has shown that direct investigation of planetary bodies using space probes invariably yields scientific knowledge not otherwise obtainable. In the case of exoplanets, such direct investigation…
The space mission PLATO will usher in a new era of exoplanetary science by expanding our current inventory of transiting systems and constraining host star ages, which are currently highly uncertain. This capability might allow PLATO to…
In the blooming field of exoplanetary science, NASA's Kepler Space Telescope has revolutionized our understanding of exoplanets. Kepler's very precise and long-duration photometry is ideal for detecting planetary transits around Sun-like…
Research into light curves from stars (temporal variation of brightness) has completely changed how exoplanets are discovered or characterised. This study including star light curves from the Kepler dataset as a way to discover exoplanets…
For much of human history we have wondered how our solar system formed, and whether there are any other planets like ours around other stars. Only in the last 20 years have we had direct evidence for the existence of exoplanets, with the…
While the number of detected planets is continuously increasing since 1995, their impact on their central star still remain poorly understood. Yet, the presence of a massive close-in planet can strongly modify the surface angular velocity…
Some pulsating stars are good clocks. When they are found in binary stars, the frequencies of their luminosity variations are modulated by the Doppler effect caused by orbital motion. For each pulsation frequency this manifests itself as a…
With the increasing number of detected exoplanet samples, the statistical properties of planetary systems have become much clearer. In this review, we summarize the major statistics that have been revealed mainly by radial velocity and…