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The second data release of ESA's Gaia satellite (Gaia DR2) revolutionised astronomy by providing accurate distances, proper motions, apparent magnitudes, and in many cases temperatures and radial velocities for an unprecedented number of…
Present and upcoming NASA missions will be intensively observing a selected, partially overlapping set of stars for exoplanet studies. Key physical and chemical information about these stars and their systems is needed for planning…
Understanding a planet's atmosphere is a necessary condition for understanding not only the planet itself, but also its formation, structure, evolution, and habitability, This puts a premium on obtaining spectra, and developing credible…
Exoplanet atmosphere characterization has seen revolutionary advances over the last few years, providing us with unique insights into atmospheric chemistry, dynamics and planet formation mechanisms. However, true solar system analog planets…
I present a review of observational efforts to study known extrasolar planets by methods that are complementary to the radial velocity technique. I describe the current state of attempts to detect and characterize such planets by…
To date, the ability for observers to reveal the composition or thermal structure of an exoplanet's atmosphere has rested on two techniques: high-contrast direct imaging and time-series observations of transiting exoplanets. The former is…
The Gaia data will help to improve the construction of a luminosity function for the disk and the halo and will provide a more accurate determination of the age of our solar neighborhood. Moreover, reliable stellar dynamical investigations…
Today's most detailed characterization of exoplanet atmospheres is accessible via transit spectroscopy (TS). Detecting transiting exoplanets only yields their size, and it is thus standard to measure a planet's mass before moving towards…
The first data release from the Gaia mission contains accurate positions and magnitudes for more than a billion sources, and proper motions and parallaxes for the majority of the 2.5~million Hipparcos and Tycho-2 stars. We describe three…
The transit method of exoplanet discovery and characterization has enabled numerous breakthroughs in exoplanetary science. These include measurements of planetary radii, mass-radius relationships, stellar obliquities, bulk density…
Precise and, if possible, accurate characterization of exoplanets cannot be dissociated from the characterization of their host stars. In this chapter we discuss different methods and techniques used to derive fundamental properties and…
Direct imaging and spectroscopy is the likely means by which we will someday identify, confirm, and characterize an Earth-like planet around a nearby Sun-like star. This Chapter summarizes the current state of knowledge regarding…
An important goal within the quest for detecting an Earth-like extrasolar planet, will be to identify atmospheric gaseous bio-signatures. Observations of the light transmitted through the Earth's atmosphere, as for an extrasolar planet,…
A variety of terrestrial planets with different physical parameters and exotic atmospheres might plausibly exist outside our Solar System, waiting to be detected by the next generation of space-exploration missions. Some of these planets…
The typical methodology for comparing simulated galaxies with observational surveys is usually to apply a spatial selection to the simulation to mimic the region of interest covered by a comparable observational survey sample. In this work…
Although the Gaia catalogue on its own will be a very powerful tool, it is the combination of this highly accurate archive with other archives that will truly open up amazing possibilities for astronomical research. The advanced…
We describe methods designed to determine the astrophysical parameters of quasars based on spectra coming from the red and blue spectrophotometers of the Gaia satellite. These methods principally rely on two already published algorithms…
The derived physical properties of the known transiting extrasolar planetary systems come from a variety of sources, and are calculated using a range of different methods so are not always directly comparable. I present a catalogue of the…
Atmospheric spectroscopy of extrasolar planets is an intricate business. Atmospheric signatures typically require a photometric precision of $1 \times 10^{-4}$ in flux over several hours. Such precision demands high instrument stability as…
High-precision astrometry well beyond the capacities of Gaia will provide a unique way to achieve astrophysical breakthroughs, in particular on the nature of dark matter, and a complete survey of nearby habitable exoplanets. In this…