Related papers: Reliable inference of exoplanet light curve parame…
This paper is to introduce an online tool for the prediction of exoplanet transit light curves. Small telescopes can readily capture exoplanet transits under good weather conditions when the combination of a bright star and a large…
Limb-darkening is fundamental in determining transit lightcurve shapes, and is typically modeled by a variety of laws that parametrize the intensity profile of the star that is being transited. Confronted with a transit lightcurve, some…
Exoplanet research is carried out at the limits of the capabilities of current telescopes and instruments. The studied signals are weak, and often embedded in complex systematics from instrumental, telluric, and astrophysical sources.…
The estimation of periodicity is a fundamental task in many scientific areas of study. Existing methods rely on theoretical assumptions that the observation times have equal or i.i.d. spacings, and that common estimators, such as the…
Instrument models (IMs) enable the reduction of systematic error in transit spectroscopy light curve data, but, since the model formulation can influence the estimation of science model parameters, characterization of the instrument model…
We present a new few-parameter phenomenological model of light curves of eclipsing binaries and stars with transiting planets that is able to fit the observed light curves with the accuracy better than 1\% of their amplitudes. The model can…
The construction and implementation of atmospheric model grids is a popular tool in exoplanet characterisation. These typically vary a number of parameters linearly, containing one model for every combination of parameter values. Here we…
Space-based transit search missions such as Kepler are collecting large numbers of stellar light curves of unprecedented photometric precision and time coverage. However, before this scientific goldmine can be exploited fully, the data must…
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…
Eclipsing Binaries (EBs) are known to be the source of most accurate stellar parameters, which are important for testing theories of stellar evolution. With improved quality and quantity of observations using space telescopes like {\it…
Exploring exoplanets has transformed our understanding of the universe by revealing many planetary systems that defy our current understanding. To study their atmospheres, spectroscopic observations are used to infer essential atmospheric…
A key goal of exoplanet spectroscopy is to measure atmospheric properties, such as abundances of chemical species, in order to connect them to our understanding of atmospheric physics and planet formation. In this new era of high-quality…
The use of Gaussian processes (GPs) as models for astronomical time series datasets has recently become almost ubiquitous, given their ease of use and flexibility. GPs excel in particular at marginalization over the stellar signal in cases…
Provided that sufficient resources are deployed, we can look forward to an extraordinary future in which we will characterize potentially habitable planets. Until now, we have had to base interpretations of observations on habitability…
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…
Very precise measurements of exoplanet transit lightcurves both from ground and space based observatories make it now possible to fit the limb-darkening coefficients in the transit-fitting procedure rather than fix them to theoretical…
There is a unique solution of the planet and star parameters from a planet transit light curve with two or more transits if the planet has a circular orbit and the light curve is observed in a band pass where limb darkening is negligible.…
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…
Since the discovery of the first exoplanets more than 20 years ago, there has been an increasing need for photometric and spectroscopic models to characterize these systems. While imaging has been used extensively for Solar System bodies…
As the statistical power of imaging surveys grows, it is crucial to account for all systematic uncertainties. This is normally done by constructing a model of these uncertainties and then marginalizing over the additional model parameters.…