Related papers: On the Possibility of Detecting Class A Stellar En…
Asteroseismology is among the most powerful observational tools to determine fundamental properties of stars. Space-based photometry has recently enabled the systematic detection of oscillations in exoplanet host stars, allowing a…
The detection of planetary transits in the light curves of active stars, featuring correlated noise in the form of stellar variability, remains a challenge. Depending on the noise characteristics, we show that the traditional technique that…
Transits of exoplanets across cool stars contain blended information about structures on the stellar surface and about the planetary body and atmosphere. To advance understanding of how this information is entangled, a surface-flux…
The increasing number of transiting exoplanets sparked a significant interest in discovering their moons. Most of the methods in the literature utilize timing analysis of the raw light curves. Here we propose a new approach for the direct…
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…
We present Pandora, a new software to model, detect, and characterize transits of extrasolar planets with moons in stellar photometric time series. Pandora uses an analytical description of the transit light curve for both the planet and…
The prevailing assumption is that all exoplanets are made of ordinary matter. However, we propose an unconventional possibility that some exoplanets could be made of dark matter, which we name "dark exoplanets." In this paper, we explore…
The forthcoming space missions, able to detect Earth-like planets by the transit method, will a fortiori also be able to detect the transit of artificial planet-size objects. Multiple artificial objects would produce lightcurves easily…
We present theoretical predictions for photometric and spectroscopic signatures of rings around transiting extrasolar planets. On the basis of a general formulation for the transiting signature in the stellar light curve and the velocity…
We predict how a remote observer would see the brightness variations of giant planets similar to Jupiter and Saturn as they orbit their central stars. We model the geometry of Jupiter, Saturn and Saturn's rings for varying orbital and…
Although the extra-solar planets discovered so far are of the giant, gaseous, type, the increased sensitivity of future surveys will result in the discovery of lower mass planets. The detection of O2 in the atmosphere of a rocky extra-solar…
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission measured light from stars in ~75% of the sky throughout its two year primary mission, resulting in millions of TESS 30-minute cadence light curves to analyze in the search for…
We suggest to use the Hubble Space Telescople (HST) follow-up observations of the TESS targets for detecting possible plasma tori along the orbits of exoplanets orbiting M dwarfs. The source of the torus could be planetary volcanic activity…
While the solar system contains about 20 times more moons than planets, no moon has been confirmed around any of the thousands of extrasolar planets known so far. Tools for an uncomplicated identification of the most promising exomoon…
The search for planets orbiting other stars has recently expanded to include stars from galaxies outside the Milky Way. With the TESS and Gaia surveys, photometric and kinematic information can be combined to identify transiting planet…
The light curve of an exoplanetary transit can be used to estimate the planetary radius and other parameters of interest. Because accurate parameter estimation is a non-analytic and computationally intensive problem, it is often useful to…
Observed exoplanet transit spectra are usually retrieved using 1D models to determine atmospheric composition while planetary atmospheres are 3D. With the JWST and future space telescopes such as Ariel, we will be able to obtain…
Continuing work initiated in an earlier publication [Sato and Asada, PASJ, 61, L29 (2009)], we consider light curves influenced by the orbital inclination and eccentricity of a companion in orbit around a transiting extrasolar planet (in a…
The XO project aims at detecting transiting exoplanets around bright stars from the ground using small telescopes. The original configuration of XO (McCullough et al. 2005) has been changed and extended as described here. The instrumental…
Several processes can cause the shape of an extrasolar giant planet's shadow, as viewed in transit, to depart from circular. In addition to rotational effects, cloud formation, non-homogenous haze production and movement, and dynamical…