Related papers: Extrasolar Planets in the Classroom
Exoplanets, short for `extra solar planets', are planets outside our solar system. They are objects with masses less than around 15 Jupiter-masses that orbit stars other than the Sun. They are small enough so they can not burn deuterium in…
Gravitational microlensing provides a unique window on the properties and prevalence of extrasolar planetary systems because of its ability to find low-mass planets at separations of a few AU. The early evidence from microlensing indicates…
Extra-solar planets can be efficiently detected in gravitational microlensing events of high magnification. High accuracy photometry is required over a short, well-defined time interval only, of order 10-30 hours. Most planets orbiting the…
Our understanding of extra-solar planet systems is highly driven by advances in observations in the past decade. Thanks to high precision spectrograph, we are able to reveal unseen companions to stars with the radial velocity method. High…
Due to their extremely small luminosity compared to the stars they orbit, planets outside our own Solar System are extraordinarily difficult to detect directly in optical light. Careful photometric monitoring of distant stars, however, can…
The known extrasolar planets exhibit many interesting and surprising features--extremely short-period orbits, high-eccentricity orbits, mean-motion and secular resonances, etc.--and have dramatically expanded our appreciation of the…
Of the approximately 350 extrasolar planets currently known, of order 10% orbit evolved stars with radii R >~ 2.5 R_sun. These planets are of particular interest because they tend to orbit more massive hosts, and have been subjected to…
Transiting extrasolar planets provide an opportunity to study the mass-radius relation of planets as well as their internal structure. The existence of a secondary eclipse enables further study of the thermal properties of the the planet by…
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…
When extrasolar planets are observed to transit their parent stars, we are granted unprecedented access to their physical properties. It is only for transiting planets that we are permitted direct estimates of the planetary masses and…
Analyzing exoplanets detected by radial velocity or transit observations, we determine the multiplicity of exoplanet host stars in order to study the influence of a stellar companion on the properties of planet candidates. Matching the host…
More than 200 extrasolar planets have been discovered around relatively nearby stars, primarily through the Doppler line shifts owing to the reflex motions of their host stars, and more recently through transits of some planets across the…
We have recently hit the milestone of 5,000 exoplanets discovered. In stark contrast with the Solar System, most of the exoplanets we know to date orbit extremely close to their host stars, causing them to lose copious amounts of gas…
A unique analytical solution of planet and star parameters can be derived from an extrasolar planet transit light curve under a number of assumptions. This analytical solution can be used to choose the best planet transit candidates for…
I present an homogeneous determination of the physical properties of 14 transiting extrasolar planetary systems for which good data are available. The input quantities for each system are the results of the light curve analyses (Paper 1),…
Observing extrasolar planetary transits is one of the only ways that we may infer the masses and radii of planets outside the Solar System. As such, the detections made by photometric transit surveys are one of the only foreseeable ways…
We investigate whether rings around extrasolar planets could be detected from those planets' transit lightcurves. To this end we develop a basic theoretical framework for calculating and interpreting the lightcurves of ringed planet…
The proposed Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will survey the entire sky to locate the nearest and brightest transiting extrasolar planets with orbital periods up to about 36 days. Here we estimate the number and kind of…
We discuss the detectability of gravitationally bounded pairs of gas-giant planets (which we call "binary planets") in extrasolar planetary systems that are formed through orbital instability followed by planet-planet dynamical tides during…
For centuries, our knowledge of planetary systems and ideas about planet formation were based on a single example, our solar system. During the last thirteen years, the discovery of ~170 planetary systems has ushered in a new era for…