Related papers: Space based microlensing planet searches

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will search for planets transiting bright and nearby stars. TESS has been selected by NASA for launch in 2017 as an Astrophysics Explorer mission. The spacecraft will be placed into a highly…

Planetary systems toward the Galactic Bulge can be detected through microlensing measurements. The microlensing planet search technique has some unique merits: low-mass planets can be detected from the ground; the Galactic family of…

The study of extrasolar planets has rapidly expanded to encompass the search for new planets, measurements of sizes and masses, models of planetary interiors, planetary demographics and occurrence frequencies, the characterization of…

Significant advances in the discovery and characterization of the planetary systems of nearby stars can be accomplished with a moderate aperture high performance coronagraphic space mission that could be started in the next decade. Its…

Strong gravitational lensing of quasars has the potential to unlock the poorly understood physics of these fascinating objects, as well as serve as a probe of the lensing mass distribution and of cosmological parameters. In particular,…

Twenty-one years after Bohdan's seminal paper launched the field of gravitational microlensing, it has radically diversified from a method narrowly focused on finding dark matter to a very general astronomical tool. Microlensing has now…

Estimating the number of microlensing events observed in different parts of the Galactic bulge is a crucial point in planning microlensing experiments. Reliable estimates are especially important if observing resources are scarce, as is the…

This chapter reviews various methods of detecting planetary companions to stars from an observational perspective, focusing on radial velocities, astrometry, direct imaging, transits, and gravitational microlensing. For each method, this…

Gaudi, Naber & Sackett pointed out that if an event is caused by a lens system containing more than two planets, all planets will affect the central region of the magnification pattern, and thus the existence of the multiple planets can be…

More than 100 microlensing events have been detected during the last ~4 years, most of them towards the Galactic Bulge. Since the line of sight towards the Bulge passes through the disk and the Bulge itself, the known stars towards the…

Microlensing is generally thought to probe planetary systems only out to a few Einstein radii. Microlensing events generated by bound planets beyond about 10 Einstein radii generally do not yield any trace of their hosts, and so would be…

This is a personal review of various issues related to massive photometric and astrometric searches. A complete inventory of variable stars down to almost any magnitude limit will improve our understanding of the stellar evolution and the…

Stellar microlensing is a powerful method to constrain compact dark matter models, uncover binary stars, and exoplanets during caustic crossing events. At cosmological distances, {\it James-Webb Space Telescope} ({\it JWST}) is routinely…

Gravitational microlensing is the only method capable of exploring the entire population of free-floating planets down to Mars-mass objects, because the microlensing signal does not depend on the brightness of the lensing object. A…

Exoplanet science is one of the most thriving fields of modern astrophysics. A major goal is the atmospheric characterization of dozens of small, terrestrial exoplanets in order to search for signatures in their atmospheres that indicate…

Looking ahead to the next decade and imagining the landscape of astronomy in 2020, it is clear that astronomical surveys, large and small, plus extensive follow-up projects, will be a great engine of progress in our profession. Surveys have…

Quasar microlensing serves as a unique probe of discrete objects within galaxies and galaxy clusters. Recent advancement of the technique shows that it can constrain planet-scale objects beyond our native galaxy by studying their induced…

Two decades ago, empirical evidence concerning the existence and frequency of planets around stars, other than our own, was absent. Since this time, the detection of extrasolar planets from Jupiter-sized to most recently Earth-sized worlds…

The recent discovery of a staggering diversity of planets beyond the Solar System has brought with it a greatly expanded search space for habitable worlds. The Kepler exoplanet survey has revealed that most planets in our interstellar…

The current standard model of cosmology successfully describes a variety of measurements, but the nature of its main ingredients, dark matter and dark energy, remains unknown. Euclid is a medium-class mission in the Cosmic Vision 2015-2025…