Related papers: Starspots and spin-orbit alignment for Kepler cool…
The degree of alignment between a star's spin axis and the orbital plane of its planets (the stellar obliquity) is related to interesting and poorly understood processes that occur during planet formation and evolution. Hot Jupiters…
Aim: We aim to refine the orbital and physical parameters and determine the sky-projected planet orbital obliquity of five eccentric transiting planetary systems: HAT-P-15, HAT-P-17, HAT-P-21, HAT-P-26, and HAT-P-29. Each of the systems…
Kepler-408 is one of the 33 planet-hosting {\it Kepler} stars for which asteroseismology has been used to investigate the orientation of the stellar rotation axis relative to the planetary orbital plane. The transiting "hot Earth,"…
Understanding the consequences of the gravitational interaction between a star and a planet is fundamental to the study of exoplanets. The solution of the two-body problem shows that the planet moves in an elliptical path around the star…
Planetary rings produce a distinct shape distortion in transit lightcurves. However, to accurately model such lightcurves the observations need to cover the entire transit, especially ingress and egress, as well as an out-of-transit…
The field of exoplanetary science has experienced a recent surge of new systems that is largely due to the precision photometry provided by the Kepler mission. The latest discoveries have included compact planetary systems in which the…
The discovery of Jupiter-mass planets in close orbits about their parent stars has challenged models of planet formation. Recent observations have shown that a number of these planets have highly inclined, sometimes retrograde orbits about…
Approximately half of the planets discovered by NASA's Kepler mission are in systems where just a single planet transits its host star, and the remaining planets are observed to be in multi-planet systems. Recent analyses have reported a…
Doppler planet searches revealed that many giant planets orbit close to their host star or in highly eccentric orbits. These and subsequent observations inspired new theories of planet formation that invoke gravitation interactions in…
We present new spectroscopic and photometric observations of the transiting exoplanetary system WASP-3. Spectra obtained during two separate transits exhibit the Rossiter-McLaughlin (RM) effect and allow us to estimate the sky-projected…
The light curve of an eclipsing system shows anomalies whenever the eclipsing body passes in front of active regions on the eclipsed star. In some cases, the pattern of anomalies can be used to determine the obliquity $\Psi$ of the eclipsed…
The orbital properties of the (as-yet) small population of hot Jupiters with nearby planetary companions provide valuable constraints on the past migration processes of these systems. In this work, we explore the likelihood that dynamical…
Solar system planets move on almost circular orbits. In strong contrast, many massive gas giant exoplanets travel on highly elliptical orbits, whereas the shape of the orbits of smaller, more terrestrial, exoplanets remained largely…
Planets may be rotationally flattened, and their oblateness thus provide useful information on their formation and evolution. Here we develop a new algorithm that can compute the transit light curve due to an oblate planet very efficiently…
The probability that an exoplanet transits its host star is high for planets in close orbits, but drops off rapidly for increasing semimajor axes. This makes transit surveys for planets with large semimajor axes orbiting bright stars…
This paper reports the discovery and characterization of the transiting hot giant exoplanet Kepler-17b. The planet has an orbital period of 1.486 days, and radial velocity measurements from the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) show a Doppler…
Hot Jupiters (HJs) are massive gaseous planets orbiting close to their host stars. Due to their physical characteristics and proximity to the central star, HJs are the natural laboratories to study the process of star-planet interaction…
We examine the formation of planets around binary stars in light of the recently discovered systems Kepler 16, 34 and 35. We conduct hydrodynamical simulations of self gravitating disks around binary systems. The selected binary and disk…
We present a pattern emerging from stellar obliquity measurements in single-star systems: planets with high planet-to-star mass ratios ($M_{\rm p}/M{_*}$$>$ $2\times10^{-3}$) -- such as super-Jupiters, brown dwarf companions, and M-dwarfs…
Exoplanetary systems hosting multiple low-mass planets are thought to have experienced dynamical instability, during which planet-planet collisions and mergers occur; these collisions can impart substantial amount of angular momentum to the…