Related papers: Flicker as a tool for characterizing planets throu…
Stellar properties are measured for a large set of Kepler Mission exoplanet candidate host stars. Most of these stars are fainter than 14th magnitude, in contrast to other spectroscopic follow-up studies. This sample includes many…
We present observations of three distinct transits of HD 17156b obtained with the Fine Guidance Sensors (FGS) on board the Hubble Space Telescope} (HST). We analyzed both the transit photometry and previously published radial velocities to…
We present Kepler exoplanet occurrence rates for planets between $0.5-16$ R$_\oplus$ and between $1-400$ days. To measure occurrence, we use a non-parametric method via a kernel density estimator and use bootstrap random sampling for…
The recently approved NASA K2 mission has the potential to multiply by an order of magnitude the number of short-period transiting planets found by Kepler around bright and low-mass stars, and to revolutionise our understanding of stellar…
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…
We present the characterization of the Kepler-93 exoplanetary system, based on three years of photometry gathered by the Kepler spacecraft. The duration and cadence of the Kepler observations, in tandem with the brightness of the star,…
Binarity is often invoked to explain peculiarities that can not be explained by the standard theory of stellar evolution. Detecting orbital motion via the Doppler effect is the best method to test binarity when direct imaging is not…
Asteroseismic data can be used to determine surface gravities with precisions of < 0.05 dex by using the global seismic quantities Deltanu and nu_max along with Teff and [Fe/H]. Surface gravity is also one of the four stellar properties to…
Accurate stellar parameters and precise elemental abundances are vital pieces to correctly characterize discovered planetary systems, better understand planet formation, and trace galactic chemical evolution. We have performed a uniform…
We present empirical calibrations that estimate stellar metallicity, effective temperature and surface gravity as a function of Lick/IDS indices. These calibrations have been derived from a training set of 261 stars for which (1)…
The discovery of rings around extrasolar planets ("exorings") is one of the next breakthroughs in exoplanetary research. Previous studies have explored the feasibility of detecting exorings with present and future photometric sensitivities…
Asteroseismology has been extremely successful in determining the properties of stars in different evolutionary stages with a remarkable level of precision. However, to fully exploit its potential, robust methods for estimating stellar…
We describe a search for infra-red excess emission from dusty circumstellar material around 180,000 stars observed by the Kepler and WISE missions. This study is motivated by i) the potential to find bright warm disks around planet host…
The availability of photometric imaging of several thousand galaxies with the Spitzer Space Telescope enables a mid-infrared calibration of the correlation between luminosity and rotation in spiral galaxies. The most important advantage of…
Determining the mass of stars is crucial both to improving stellar evolution theory and to characterising exoplanetary systems. Asteroseismology offers a promising way to estimate stellar mean density. When combined with accurate radii…
We have made high-resolution, high-sensitivity dynamic spectra of a sample of strong pulsars at 430 MHz with the Arecibo radiotelescope. For 4 pulsars we find faint but sharply delineated features in the secondary spectra. These are…
The disciplines of asteroseismology and extrasolar planet science overlap methodically in the branch of high-precision photometric time series observations. Light curves are, amongst others, useful to measure intrinsic stellar variability…
Main-sequence stars earlier than spectral type ~F6 or so are expected to rotate rapidly due to their radiative exteriors. This rapid rotation leads to an oblate stellar figure. It also induces the photosphere to be hotter (by up to several…
Kepler-33 hosts five validated transiting planets ranging in period from 5 to 41 days. The planets are in nearly co-planar orbits and exhibit remarkably similar (appropriately scaled) transit durations indicative of similar impact…
Aperiodic broad-band variability (also known as flickering) is observed throughout all types of accreting compact objects. Many statistical properties of this variability can be naturally explained with the fluctuating accretion disk model,…