Related papers: Planet transit and stellar granulation detection w…
The detectability of moons of extra-solar planets is investigated, focussing on the time-of-arrival perturbation technique, a method for detecting moons of pulsar planets, and the photometric transit timing technique, a method for detecting…
Mapping distant worlds is the next frontier for exoplanet infrared photometry studies. Ultimately, constraining spatial and temporal properties of an exoplanet atmosphere will provide further insight into its physics. For tidally-locked hot…
Near-infrared photometry of transiting extrasolar planets can be of great scientific value. It is however not straightforward to reach the necessary millimagnitude precision. Here we report on our attempts to observe transits and secondary…
(Abridged) We discuss the design considerations of the EXPLORE (EXtra-solar PLanet Occultation REsearch) project, a series of transiting planet searches using 4-m-class telescopes to continuously monitor a single field of stars in the…
The migration of growing protoplanets depends on the thermodynamics of the ambient disc. Standard modelling, using locally isothermal discs, indicate in the low planet mass regime an inward (type-I) migration. Taking into account…
Transits of bright stars offer a unique opportunity to study detailed properties of extrasolar planets that cannot be determined through radial-velocity observations. We propose a new technique to find such systems using all-sky…
We have measured transit times for HD 189733b passing in front of its bright (V = 7.67) chromospherically active and spotted parent star. Nearly continuous broadband optical photometry of this system was obtained with the MOST…
New photometric space missions to detect and characterise transiting exoplanets are focusing on bright stars to obtain high cadence, high signal-to-noise light curves. Since these missions will be sensitive to stellar oscillations and…
We present Hubble Space Telescope near-infrared transit photometry of the nearby hot-Jupiter HD189733b. The observations were taken with the NICMOS instrument during five transits, with three transits executed with a narrowband filter at…
Clouds have been shown to be present in many exoplanetary atmospheres. Cloud formation modeling predicts considerable inhomogeneities of cloud cover, consistent with optical phase curve observations. However, optical phase curves cannot…
New images of young stars are revolutionizing our understanding of planet formation. ALMA detects large grains in planet-forming disks with few AU scale resolution and scattered light imaging with extreme adaptive optics systems reveal…
[Abridged] The study of disc kinematics has recently opened up as a promising method to detect unseen planets. However, a systematic, statistically meaningful analysis of such an approach remains missing. The aim of this work is to devise…
Bathed in intense ionizing radiation, close-in gaseous planets undergo hydrodynamic atmospheric escape, which ejects the upper extent of their atmospheres into the interplanetary medium. Ultraviolet detections of escaping gas around…
We quantify the effects of refraction in transit transmission spectroscopy on spectral absorption features and on temporal variations that could be used to obtain altitude-dependent spectra for planets orbiting stars of different stellar…
Spectroscopy across spatially resolved stellar surfaces reveals spectral line profiles free from rotational broadening, whose gradual changes from disk center toward the stellar limb reflect an atmospheric fine structure that is possible to…
Context: Planets outside our solar system transiting their host star, i. e. those with an orbital inclination near 90 degree, are of special interest to derive physical properties of extrasolar planets. With the knowledge of the host star's…
We analyzed the combined near-infrared spectrum of a star-planet system with thermal emission atmospheric models, based on the composition and physical parameters of the system. The main objective of this work is to obtain the inclination…
Transmission spectroscopy can be used to constrain the properties of exoplanetary atmospheres. During a transit, the light blocked from the atmosphere of the planet leaves an imprint in the light coming from the star. This has been shown…
Coronagraphic imaging in combination with moderate to high spectral resolution may prove more effective in both detecting extrasolar planets and characterizing them than a standard coronagraphic imaging approach. We envisage an…
The transiting exoplanet HD 149026b is an important case for theories of planet formation and planetary structure, because the planet's relatively small size has been interpreted as evidence for a highly metal-enriched composition. We…