Related papers: Exoplanetary Geophysics -- An Emerging Discipline
The characterization of exoplanetary atmospheres has come of age in the last decade, as astronomical techniques now allow for albedos, chemical abundances, temperature profiles and maps, rotation periods and even wind speeds to be measured.…
Giant planets have key role in shaping planetary systems. Their composition reveals information on the conditions at which planets form, and their interiors serve as natural laboratories to explore the behavior of materials at extreme…
Thirteen exo-planets have been discovered using the gravitational microlensing technique (out of which 7 have been published). These planets already demonstrate that super-Earths (with mass up to ~10 Earth masses) beyond the snow line are…
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…
Direct observations of exoplanets probe the demographics and atmospheric composition of young self-luminous companions, yielding insight into their formation and early evolution history. In the near future, Gaia will reveal hundreds of…
The physical bases of the detection and characterisation of extrasolar planets in the reflected light and thermal emission regimes are reviewed. They both have their advantages and disadvantages, including artefacts, in the determination of…
From wispy gas giants on the verge of disruption to tiny rocky bodies already falling apart, short-period exoplanets pose a severe puzzle to theories of planet formation and orbital evolution. By far most of the planets known beyond the…
Over the last two decades, the discovery of exoplanets has fundamentally changed our perception of the universe and humanity's place within it. Recent work indicates that a solar system's X-ray and high energy particle environment is of…
The study of our Solar System -- its formation, evolution, and long-term stability -- has been ongoing for centuries and is now a standard part of scientific education. While the formation of other Solar-like exoplanetary systems is…
The varied surfaces and atmospheres of planets make them interesting places to live, explore, and study from afar. Unfortunately, the great distance to exoplanets makes it impossible to resolve their disk with current or near-term…
When extrasolar planets are observed to transit their parent stars, we are granted unprecedented access to their physical properties. It is only for transiting planets that we are permitted direct estimates of the planetary masses and…
The search for extrasolar rocky planets has already found the first transiting rocky super-Earth, Corot 7b, with a surface temperature that allows for magma oceans. Here we ask if we could distinguish rocky planets with recent major…
Transiting extrasolar planets are extraordinarily valuable for understanding the characteristics and formation of planets, because they are the only exoplanets whose physical and orbital properties can be measured to high precision.…
Extrasolar planetary host stars are enriched in key planet-building elements. These enrichments have the potential to drastically alter the building blocks available for terrestrial planet formation. Here we report on the combination of…
This article presents a review on the observations and theoretical modeling of the evaporation of extrasolar planets. The observations and the resulting constraints on the upper atmosphere (thermosphere and exosphere) of the "hot-Jupiters".…
The best-characterized exoplanets to date are planets on close-in transiting orbits around their host stars. The high level of irradiation and transiting geometry of these objects make them ideal targets for atmospheric investigations.…
Analysis of the statistical properties of exoplanets, together with those of their host stars, are providing a unique view into the process of planet formation and evolution. In this paper we explore the properties of the mass distribution…
There are many competing theories and models describing the formation, migration and evolution of exoplanet systems. As both the precision with which we can characterize exoplanets and their host stars, and the number of systems for which…
Gas giants are the most readily detectable exoplanets but fundamental questions about their system architectures, formation, migration, and atmospheres have been unanswerable with the current generation of ground- and space-based…
Future surveys for transiting extrasolar planets, including the space-based mission Kepler (Borucki et al 2003), are expected to detect hundreds of Jovian mass planets and tens of terrestrial mass planets. For many of these newly discovered…