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Exoplanets, or planets outside our own solar system, have long been of interest to astronomers; however, only in the past two decades have scientists had the technology to characterize and study planets so far away from us. With advanced…
The radial velocity method for detecting extra-solar planets relies on measuring the star's wobble around the system's center of mass. Since this is an indirect method, we may ask if there are other dynamical effects that can mimic such…
We present a new observational campaign, DWARF, aimed at detection of circumbinary extrasolar planets using the timing of the minima of low-mass eclipsing binaries. The observations will be performed within an extensive network of…
Detached eclipsing double line spectroscopic binaries offer an opportunity to measure directly stellar parameters: mass, luminosity, radius, as well as the distance. The only non-trivial step is the need to determine surface brightness of…
The traditional method for detecting extra-solar planets relies on measuring a small stellar wobble which is assumed to be caused by a planet orbiting the star. Recently, it was suggested that a similar stellar wobble could be caused by a…
The growing rate of increase in the number of the discovered extra-solar planets which has consequently raised the enthusiasm to explore the universe in hope of finding earth-like planets has resulted in the wide use of Gravitational…
Microlensing is one of the most promising tools for discovering stellar-mass black holes (BHs) in the Milky Way because it allows us to probe dark or faint celestial compact objects. While the existence of stellar-mass BHs has been…
Specially-designed microlensing searches, some of which have been underway for several years, are sensitive to extrasolar planets orbiting the most common stars in our Galaxy. Microlensing is particularly well-suited to the detection of…
We present a new method to identify and probe planetary companions of stars in the Galactic Bulge and Magellanic Clouds using gravitational microlensing. While spectroscopic studies of these planets is well beyond current observational…
Eclipsing binary systems form the fundamental basis of Astronomy in the sense that they are the primary means to determine fundamental stellar astrophysical quantities such as mass, radius, and temperature. Furthermore, they allow us to…
We present a new method for differentiating between planetary transits and eclipsing binaries based on the presence of the ellipsoidal light variations. These variations can be used to detect stellar secondaries with masses ~0.2 M_sun…
We investigate the improved detection of extrasolar planets around eclipsing binaries using eclipse minima timing, and extrasolar moons around transiting planets using transit timing, offered by the upcoming COROT (ESA, 2005), Kepler (NASA,…
Close binary stars are binary stars where the component stars are close enough such that they can exchange mass and/or energy. They are subdivided into semi-detached, overcontact or ellipsoidal binary stars. A challenging problem in the…
Red-giant stars are proving to be an incredible source of information for testing models of stellar evolution, as asteroseismology has opened up a window into their interiors. Such insights are a direct result of the unprecedented data from…
Weird galaxies are outliers that have either unknown or very uncommon features making them different from the normal sample. These galaxies are very interesting as they may provide new insights into current theories, or can be used to form…
In the last decade, over a million stars were monitored to detect transiting planets. Manual interpretation of potential exoplanet candidates is labor intensive and subject to human error, the results of which are difficult to quantify.…
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…
Transits of bright stars offer a unique opportunity to study detailed properties of extrasolar planets that cannot be determined through radial-velocity observations. We propose a new technique to find such systems using all-sky…
Evidence from the analysis of eclipsing binary systems revealed that late-type stars are larger and cooler than predicted by models, and that this is probably caused by stellar magnetic activity. In this work, we revisit this problem taking…
The use of a method of spectra disentangling for telluric lines is explained in detail, with a particular emphasis on high-precision radial-velocity measurements for the search for extrasolar planets. New improvements to the method are…