Related papers: The Detectability of Moons of Extra-Solar Planets
We show that a space-based gravitational microlensing survey for terrestrial extra-solar planets is feasible in the near future, and could provide a nearly complete picture of the properties of planetary systems in our Galaxy. We present…
Radio wavelength astrometry of stars and other objects has a long and productive history. The use of that technique to determine whether stars have planets around them would cover a nearly unique part of the parameter space for detection of…
Microlensing is the most promising method to study the statistical frequency of extra-solar planets orbiting typical (random) stars in the Milky Way, even those several kiloparsecs from Earth. The lensing zone corresponds to orbital…
The probability of the detection of Earth-like exoplanets may increase in the near future after the launch of the space missions using the transit photometry as observation method. By using this technique only the semi-major axis of the…
The phenomenon of microlensing has successfully been used to detect extrasolar planets. By observing characteristic, rare deviations in the gravitational microlensing light curve one can discover that a lens is a star--planet system. In…
The currently feasible method of detection of Earth-mass planets is transit photometry, with detection probability decreasing with a planet's distance from the star. The existence or otherwise of short-period terrestrial planets will tell…
The ultra-precise photometric space satellite MOST (Microvariability and Oscillations of STars) will provide the first opportunity to measure the albedos and scattered light curves from known short-period extrasolar planets. Due to the…
The orbital sampling effect (OSE) appears in phase-folded transit light curves of extrasolar planets with moons. Analytical OSE models have hitherto neglected stellar limb darkening and non-zero transit impact parameters and assumed that…
An extra-solar planet can be detected by microlensing because the planet can perturb the smooth lensing light curve created by the primary lens. However, it was shown by Gaudi that a subset of binary-source events can produce light curves…
The recent discovery of a planetary transit in the star HD 209458, and the subsequent highly precise observation of the transit lightcurve with Hubble Space Telescope, is encouraging to search for any phenomena that might induce small…
Of the known transiting extra-solar planets, a few have been detected through photometric follow-up observations of radial velocity planets. Perhaps the best known of these is the transiting exoplanet HD 209458b. For hot Jupiters (periods…
Theoretical studies predict that Trojans are likely a frequent byproduct of planet formation and evolution. We present a novel method of detecting Trojan companions to transiting extrasolar planets which involves comparing the time of…
We report a method that uses "completeness" to estimate the number of exrasolar planets discovered by an observing program with a direct-imaging instrument. We develop a completeness function for Earth-like planets on "habitable" orbits for…
We study the possibility to detect extrasolar planets in M31 through pixel-lensing observations. Using a Monte Carlo approach, we select the physical parameters of the binary lens system, a star hosting a planet, and we calculate the…
Radial velocity searches for extrasolar planets have recently detected several very low mass (7-20M_Earth) planets in close orbits with periods <10 days. We consider the prospects for detecting the analogs of these planets in Galactic open…
For the Eddington mission, the intrinsic stellar variability can be a major source of noise in the detection of extrasolar planets by the transit method. We derive that most detections of terrestrial planets (1-2 R_Earth) will occur around…
Never before has the detection and characterization of exoplanets via transit photometry been as promising and feasible as it is now, due to the increasing breadth and sensitivity of time domain optical surveys. Past works have made use of…
We present a model of the stellar populations in the fields observed by one of the SuperWASP-N cameras in the 2004 observing season. We use the Besancon Galactic model to define the range of stellar types and metallicities present, and…
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…
We study the statistical characteristics of a box-fitting algorithm to analyze stellar photometric time series in the search for periodic transits by extrasolar planets. The algorithm searches for signals characterized by a periodic…