Related papers: Characterizing small planets transiting small star…

Radial velocities measured from near-infrared spectra are a potentially powerful tool to search for planets around cool stars and sub-stellar objects. However, no technique currently exists that yields near-infrared radial velocity…

We present an overview of SPICA, the Space Infrared Telescope for Cosmology and Astrophysics, a world-class space observatory optimized for mid- and far-IR astronomy (from 5 to ~210um) with a cryogenically cooled ~3.2m telescope (<6 K). Its…

We describe a project (transitsearch.org) currently attempting to discover transiting intermediate-period planets orbiting bright parent stars, and we simulate that project's performance. The discovery of such a transit would be an…

For several years, the metastable helium triplet line has been successfully used as a tracer to probe atmospheric escape in transiting exoplanets. This absorption in the near-infrared (1083.3 nm) can be observed from the ground using…

The idea of finding extrasolar planets (ESPs) through observations of drops in stellar brightness due to transiting objects has been around for decades. It has only been in the last ten years, however, that any serious attempts to find ESPs…

Precise measurements of chemical abundances in planetary atmospheres are necessary to constrain the formation histories of exoplanets. A recent study of WASP-127b, a close-in puffy sub-Saturn orbiting its solar-type host star in 4.2 d,…

Studies of young planets help us understand planet evolution and investigate important evolutionary processes such as atmospheric escape. We monitored IRAS 04125+2902, a 3 Myr-old T Tauri star with a transiting planet and a transitional…

New generation exoplanet imagers on large ground-based telescopes are highly optimised for the detection of young giant exoplanets in the near-infrared, but they are intrinsically limited for their characterisation by the low spectral…

SPHERE is an instrument designed and built by a consortium of French, German, Italian, Swiss and Dutch institutes in collaboration with ESO. The project is currently in its Phase B. The main goal of SPHERE is to gain at least one order of…

Direct imaging is a tried and tested method of detecting exoplanets in the near infrared, but has so far not been extended to longer wavelengths. New data at mid-IR wavelengths (8-20{\mu}m) canprovide additional constraints on planetary…

The proposed infrared space interferometry mission Darwin has two main aims: (i) to detect and characterize exo-planets similar to the Earth, and (ii) to carry out astrophysical imaging in the wavelength range 6 - 20 micron at a sensitivity…

Surveys of nearby field stars indicate that stellar binaries are common, yet little is known about the effects that these companions may have on planet formation and evolution. The Friends of Hot Jupiters project uses three complementary…

The ExTrA facility, located at La Silla observatory, will consist of a near-infrared multi-object spectrograph fed by three 60-cm telescopes. ExTrA will add the spectroscopic resolution to the traditional differential photometry method.…

Direct imaging characterization of extrasolar planets is often done at low spectral resolution. We model the spectrograph for the Gemini Planet Imager upgrade (GPI 2.0) and assess the instrument's potential for allowing observers to…

We present the results of a deep imaging survey of stars surrounded by planets detected with the radial velocity technique. The purpose is to search for and to characterize long-period stellar and substellar companions. The sample contains…

The best-characterized exoplanets to date are planets on close-in transiting orbits around their host stars. The high level of irradiation and transiting geometry of these objects make them ideal targets for atmospheric investigations.…

Astrometry as a technique has so far proved of limited utility when employed as either a follow-up tool or to independently search for planetary mass companions orbiting nearby stars. However, this is bound to change during the next decade.…

Over the past five years, radial-velocity and transit techniques have revealed a new population of Earth-like planets with masses of a few Earth masses. Their very close orbit around their host star requires an exquisite inner working angle…

We present a review of precursor observing programs for the SIM PlanetQuest Key project devoted to detecting Jupiter mass planets around young stars. In order to ensure that the stars in the sample are free of various sources of astrometric…

Recent Spitzer infrared (IR) observations of two transiting hot Jupiters during their secondary eclipses have provided the first direct detection of planets orbiting other stars (Charbonneau et al. 2005; Deming et al. 2005). We here…