Related papers: Practical suggestions on detecting exomoons in exo…
Strong variations of any kind and causes within a stellar light curve may prohibit the detection of transits, particularly of faint or shallow transits caused by small planets passing in front of the stellar disk. The success of future…
Gravitational microlensing is a powerful method for detecting and characterizing free-floating planetary-mass objects (FFPs). FFPs could have exomoons rotating them. In this work, we study the probability of realizing these systems (i.e.,…
Transits of habitable planets around solar-like stars are expected to be shallow, and to have long periods, which means low information content. The current bottleneck in the detection of such transits is caused in large part by the…
Since the discovery of the first exoplanets more than 20 years ago, there has been an increasing need for photometric and spectroscopic models to characterize these systems. While imaging has been used extensively for Solar System bodies…
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 typically measure the radii of transiting exoplanets from the transit depth, which is given by the ratio of cross-sectional areas of the planet and star. However, if a star has dark starspots (or bright regions) distributed throughout…
Space-based photometric surveys have discovered large numbers of planets transiting other stars, but these observe in a single band-pass and yield only the planet radius, orbital period, and transit duration. Information on the masses,…
Transiting exoplanets provide detailed access to their atmospheres, as the planet's signal can be effectively separated from that of its host star. For transiting exoplanets three fundamental atmospheric measurements are possible:…
We develop a method for predicting the yield of transiting planets from a photometric survey given the parameters of the survey (nights observed, bandpass, exposure time, telescope aperture, locations of the target fields, observational…
Although transit spectroscopy is a powerful method for studying the composition, thermal properties and dynamics of exoplanet atmospheres, only a few transiting terrestrial exoplanets will be close enough to allow significant transit…
It has been suggested that moons around transiting exoplanets may cause observable signal in transit photometry or in the Rossiter-McLaughlin (RM) effect. In this paper a detailed analysis of parameter reconstruction from the RM effect is…
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…
We present two methods to determine an exomoon's sense of orbital motion (SOM), one with respect to the planet's circumstellar orbit and one with respect to the planetary rotation. Our simulations show that the required measurements will be…
Observations of stellar surfaces - except for the Sun - are hampered by their tiny angular extent, while observed spectral lines are smeared by averaging over the stellar surface, and by stellar rotation. Exoplanet transits can be used to…
Many ground-based photometric surveys are now under way, and five of them have been successful at detecting transiting exoplanets. Nevertheless, detecting transiting planets has turned out to be much more challenging than initially…
Determining wavelength-dependent exoplanet radii measurements is an excellent way to probe the composition of exoplanet atmospheres. In light of this, Borsa et al. (2016) sought to develop a technique to obtain such measurements by…
As the number of known exoplanets continues to grow, the question as to whether such bodies harbour satellite systems has become one of increasing interest. In this paper, we explore the transit timing effects that should be detectable due…
The transit timing variation technique (TTV) has been widely used to detect and characterize multiple planetary systems. Due to the observational biases imposed mainly by the photometric conditions and instrumentation and the high…
We evaluate gravitational lensing as a technique for the detection of extrasolar moons. Since 2004 gravitational microlensing has been successfully applied as a detection method for extrasolar planets. In principle, the method is sensitive…
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…