Related papers: Detection Technique for Artificially-Illuminated O…
The HST snapshot imaging survey of 110 BL Lac objects (Urry et al. 2000) has clearly shown that the host galaxies are massive and luminous ellipticals. The dispersion of the absolute magnitudes is sufficiently small, so that the measurement…
In this draft photometry and astrometry is presented from the Herschel Space Observatory (HSO). This spacecraft orbits the second Lagrangian point (L2) of the Sun -- Earth system, yielding a mean distance of a million miles (~ 1.5 million…
Transiting planets manifest themselves by a periodic dimming of their host star by a fixed amount. On the other hand, light curves of transiting circumbinary (CB) planets are expected to be neither periodic nor to have a single depth while…
Fast moving celestial objects are characterized by velocities across the celestial sphere that significantly differ from the motions of background stars. In observational images, these objects exhibit distinct shapes, contrasting with the…
Close-in extrasolar giant planets may be directly detectable by their reflected light, due to the proximity of the planet to the illuminating star. The spectrum of the system will contain a reflected light component that varies in amplitude…
We aim to illustrate the potentiality of the Advanced Large, Homogeneous Area, Medium-Band Redshift Astronomical (ALHAMBRA) survey to investigate the high redshift universe through the detection of quasi stellar objects (QSOs) at redshifts…
Discovery of transneptunian object (TNO) satellites and determination of their orbits has recently enabled estimation of the size and albedo of several small TNOs, extending the size range of objects having known size and albedo down into…
Light curves show the flux variation from the target star and its orbiting planets as a function of time. In addition to the transit features created by the planets, the flux also includes the reflected light component of each planet, which…
We use an extensive suite of numerical simulations to constrain the mass and orbit of Planet Nine, the recently proposed perturber in a distant eccentric orbit in the outer solar system. We compare our simulations to the observed population…
The hypothesis that a massive Planet Nine exists in the outer solar system on a distant eccentric orbit was inspired by observations showing that the objects with the most distant eccentric orbits in the Kuiper belt have orbits which are…
I derive the physical properties of 30 transiting extrasolar planetary systems using a homogeneous analysis of published data. The light curves are modelled with the JKTEBOP code, with attention paid to limb darkening and eccentricity. The…
Occultations provide indirect sensitivity to the number density of small Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) too faint to directly detect telescopically. We present results from the Caltech HI-speed Multicolor camERA (CHIMERA) survey with the…
Large light deflection angles are produced in the strong gravitational field regions around neutron stars and black holes. In the case of binary systems, part of the photons emitted from the companion star towards the collapsed object are…
We have explored a method for finding giant planets in the outer Solar System by detecting their thermal emission and proper motion between two far-infrared all-sky surveys separated by 23.4 years, taken with the InfraRed Astronomical…
It is known that the shape of a planet (oblateness, rings, etc.) slightly modifies the shape of the transit light curve. The forthcoming space missions (Corot, Kepler), able to detect the transit of Earth-like planets, could a fortiori also…
This paper presents a new strategy for observing faint galaxies with high order natural guide star systems. We have imaged 5 high galactic latitude fields within the isoplanatic patch of bright stars (8.5 < R < 10.3 mag). The fields provide…
We used existing data from the New Horizons LORRI camera to measure the optical-band ($0.4\lesssim\lambda\lesssim0.9{\rm\mu m}$) sky brightness within seven high galactic latitude fields. The average raw level measured while New Horizons…
Imaging Atmosphere Cherenkov Telescopes (IACT) are arrays of very large optical telescopes that are well-suited for rapid photometry of bright sources. I investigate their potential in observing stellar occultations by small objects in the…
The mutual orbital alignment in multiple planetary systems is an important parameter for understanding their formation. There are a number of elaborate techniques to determine the alignment parameters using photometric or spectroscopic…
We present a measurement of the absolute surface brightness of the zodiacal light (3900-5100A) toward a fixed extragalactic target at high ecliptic latitude based on moderate resolution (~1.3A per pixel) spectrophotometry obtained with the…