Related papers: Ground-based search for the brightest transiting p…

Context: Planets outside our solar system transiting their host star, i. e. those with an orbital inclination near 90 degree, are of special interest to derive physical properties of extrasolar planets. With the knowledge of the host star's…

Using current technology, gravitational microlensing is the only method that can measure planet masses over the full parameter space of planet and stellar-host masses and at a broad range of planet-host separations. I present a…

Precise cosmological measurements are essential for understanding the evolution of the universe and the nature of dark energy. The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), the most sensitive single-dish radio telescope, has…

A feasibility study was carried out at the Astronomical Observatory of the Autonomous Region of the Aosta Valley demonstrating that it is a well-poised site to conduct an upcoming observing campaign aimed at detecting small-size…

We report on a search for new low-surface-brightness galaxies (LSBGs) using Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) data within the GAMA equatorial fields. The search method consisted of masking objects detected with SDSS photo, combining gri…

Among the group of extrasolar planets, transiting planets provide a great opportunity to obtain direct measurements for the basic physical properties, such as mass and radius of these objects. These planets are therefore highly important in…

In this work, we study the advantages of using a Lucky Imaging camera for the observations of potential planetary microlensing events. Our aim is to reduce the blending effect and enhance exoplanet signals in binary lensing systems composed…

The Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC) is a small imaging instrument onboard Mars Express with a field of view of ~40x30 degrees. The camera was initially intended to provide visual confirmation of the separation of the Beagle 2 lander and has…

Detections of transiting planets from the upcoming PLATO mission are expected to face significant contamination from contaminating eclipsing binaries, resulting in false positives. To counter this, a ground-based programme to acquire…

Observations of exoplanet transits by small satellites have gained increasing attention for reducing detection biases. However, no unambiguous detection of an exoplanet has yet been demonstrated using optics with apertures smaller than 60…

With the discovery of the first transiting extrasolar planetary system back to 1999, a great number of projects started to hunt for other similar systems. Because of the incidence rate of such systems was unknown and the length of the…

The ESA PLATO space mission is devoted to unveiling and characterizing new extrasolar planets and their host stars. This mission will encompass a very large field of view, granting it the potential to survey up to one million stars…

The most successful method used so far to search for extrasolar planets is the radial velocity technique, where periodical shifts on the measured emission from a star provide evidence for an orbiting planet. This method has been used on…

We present here the Calar Alto Schmidt-Lemaitre Telescope (CASTLE) concept, a technology demonstrator for curved detectors, that will be installed at the Calar Alto Observatory (Spain). This telescope has a wide field of view (2.36x1.56…

Observing sites at the East-Antarctic plateau are considered to provide exceptional conditions for astronomy. The aim of this work is to assess its potential for detecting transiting extrasolar planets through a comparison and combination…

By targeting nearby M dwarfs, a transit search using modest equipment is capable of discovering planets as small as 2 Earth radii in the habitable zones of their host stars. The MEarth Project, a future transit search, aims to employ a…

Microlensing is the method of exoplanet detection that discovers solar system analog exoplanets. These are planets low in mass located in wide orbits around their host stars. Even though thousands of exoplanets are discovered, they are…

We report the first extrasolar planet observations from the 10.4-m Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), currently the world's largest, fully steerable, single-aperture optical telescope. We used the OSIRIS tunable filter imager on the GTC to…

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is the next generation of ground-based gamma-ray observatory. The observatory will consist of two arrays, one located in the southern hemisphere (Paranal,Chile) and the other in the northern hemisphere…

ASTEP South is the first phase of the ASTEP project that aims to determine the quality of Dome C as a site for future photometric searches for transiting exoplanets and discover extrasolar planets from the Concordia base in Antarctica.…