Related papers: Flicker as a tool for characterizing planets throu…
Asteroseismology allows for deriving precise values of surface gravity of stars. The accurate asteroseismic determinations now available for large number of stars in the Kepler fields can be used to check and calibrate surface gravities…
The study of fundamental properties (such as temperatures, radii, masses, and ages) and interior processes (such as convection and angular momentum transport) of stars has implications on various topics in astrophysics, ranging from the…
Flickering is a universal phenomenon in accreting astronomical systems which still defies detailed physical understanding. It is particularly evident in cataclysmic variables (CVs). Attempting to define boundary conditions for models, the…
Kepler will monitor a sufficient number of stars that it is likely to detect single transits of planets with periods longer than the mission lifetime. We show that by combining the exquisite Kepler photometry of such transits with precise…
In addition to its great potential for characterizing extra-solar planetary systems the Kepler mission is providing unique data on stellar oscillations. A key aspect of Kepler asteroseismology is the application to solar-like oscillations…
We propose a method to distinguish between planetary and stellar companions to stars which present a periodic decrease in brightness, interpreted as a transit. Light curves from a total of 177 stars from the OGLE project were fitted by the…
Owing to the remarkable photometric precision of space observatories like Kepler, stellar and planetary systems beyond our own are now being characterized en masse for the first time. These characterizations are pivotal for endeavors such…
One of the persistent complications in searches for transiting exoplanets is the low percentage of the detected candidates that ultimately prove to be planets, which significantly increases the load on the telescopes used for the follow-up…
Astrometric monitoring of stars provides a promising method for discovery of low-mass planets around nearby Sun-like stars. The astronomical community has proposed several telescopes designed to perform high-precision astrometric…
The NASA Kepler mission has observed more than 190,000 stars in the constellations of Cygnus and Lyra. Around 4 years of almost continuous ultra high-precision photometry have been obtained reaching a duty cycle higher than 90% for many of…
We present the discovery of the Kepler-19 planetary system, which we first identified from a 9.3-day periodic transit signal in the Kepler photometry. From high-resolution spectroscopy of the star, we find a stellar effective temperature…
With a handful of measurements of limb-darkening coefficients, galactic microlensing has already proven to be a powerful technique for studying atmospheres of distant stars. Survey campaigns such as OGLE-III are capable of providing ~ 10…
The transit method, employed by MOST, \emph{Kepler}, and various ground-based surveys has enabled the characterization of extrasolar planets to unprecedented precision. These results are precise enough to begin to measure planet atmosphere…
Stellar rotation periods can be determined by observing brightness variations caused by active magnetic regions transiting visible stellar disk as the star rotates. The successful stellar photometric surveys stemming from the Kepler and…
The ability to observe extrasolar planets transiting their stars has profoundly changed our understanding of these planetary systems. However, these measurements depend on how well we understand the properties of the host star, such as…
Imaging of planets is very difficult, due to the glare from their nearby, much brighter suns. Static and slowly-evolving aberrations are the limiting factors, even after application of adaptive optics. The residual speckle pattern is highly…
Asteroseismology involves using the resonant frequencies of a star to infer details about its internal structure and evolutionary state. Oscillation frequencies are most useful when accompanied by accurate measurements of the more…
The Kepler mission's primary goal is the detection and characterization of Earth-like planets by observing continuously a region of sky for a nominal period of three-and-a-half years. Over 100,000 stars will be monitored, with a small…
We calculate precise stellar radii and surface gravities from the asteroseismic analysis of over 500 solar-type pulsating stars observed by the Kepler space telescope. These physical stellar properties are compared with those given in the…
When an extrasolar planet passes in front of its star (transits), its radius can be measured from the decrease in starlight and its orbital period from the time between transits. Multiple planets transiting the same star reveal more: period…