Related papers: Making FORS2 fit for exoplanet observations (again…
The challenges of high contrast imaging (HCI) for detecting exoplanets for both ground and space applications can be met with extreme adaptive optics (ExAO), a high-order adaptive optics system that performs wavefront sensing (WFS) and…
The Wide Field Camera 3 is one of the instruments currently onboard the Hubble Space Telescope and, since 2012, with the use of the spatial scanning technique, has provided the largest number of observed exoplanetary atmosphere, ranging…
We report on a pilot study of a novel observing technique, defocussed transmission spectroscopy, and its application to the study of exoplanet atmospheres using ground-based platforms. Similar to defocussed photometry, defocussed…
An Atmospheric Dispersion Corrector (ADC) uses a double-prism arrangement to nullify the vertical chromatic dispersion introduced by the atmosphere at non-zero zenith distances. The ADC installed in the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) was first…
Santa Cruz Array of Lenslets for Exoplanet Spectroscopy (SCALES) is an instrument being designed for direct imaging of exoplanets in the infrared with the Adaptive Optics System of the W.M. Keck Observatory. The performance of SCALES will…
The differential refraction of light passing through the atmosphere can have a severe impact on image quality if no atmospheric dispersion corrector (ADC) is used. For the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) this holds true well into the…
Obtaining accurately calibrated redshift distributions of photometric samples is one of the great challenges in photometric surveys like LSST, Euclid, HSC, KiDS, and DES. We present an inference methodology that combines the redshift…
We report the first extrasolar planet observations from the 10.4-m Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), currently the world's largest, fully steerable, single-aperture optical telescope. We used the OSIRIS tunable filter imager on the GTC to…
We present recent results obtained with the VLT/MUSE Integral Field Spectrograph fed by the 4LGSF and its laser tomography adaptive optics module GALACSI. While this so-called narrow-field mode of MUSE was not designed to perform directly…
The Transit Ephemeris Refinement and Monitoring Survey (TERMS) conducts radial velocity and photometric monitoring of known exoplanets in order to refine planetary orbits and predictions of possible transit times. This effort is primarily…
Many ground-based photometric surveys are now under way, and five of them have been successful at detecting transiting exoplanets. Nevertheless, detecting transiting planets has turned out to be much more challenging than initially…
The characterization of a physically-diverse set of transiting exoplanets is an important and necessary step towards establishing the physical properties linked to the production of obscuring clouds or hazes. It is those planets with…
We present transmission spectroscopy of the warm Saturn-mass exoplanet WASP-39b made with the Very Large Telescope (VLT) FOcal Reducer and Spectrograph (FORS2) across the wavelength range 411-810nm. The transit depth is measured with a…
We identify and correct for small but coherent instrumental drifts in seven years of radial velocity data from the EXtreme PREcision Spectrograph (EXPRES). The systematics are most notable for the six months before and after 2022 January,…
Transmission spectra are differential measurements that utilize stellar illumination to probe transiting exoplanet atmospheres. Any spectral difference between the illuminating light source and the disk-integrated stellar spectrum due to…
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…
Most planetary discoveries with the K2 and TESS missions are restricted to short periods because of the limited duration of observation. However, the re-observation of sky area allows for the detection of longer period planets. We describe…
The signal induced by a temperate, terrestrial planet orbiting a Sun-like star is an order of magnitude smaller than the host stars' intrinsic variability. Understanding stellar activity is, therefore, a fundamental obstacle in confirming…
We propose a method for observing transiting exoplanets with near-infrared high-resolution spectrometers. We aim to create a robust data analysis method for recovering atmospheric transmission spectra from transiting exoplanets over a wide…
Using forward models for representative exoplanet atmospheres and a radiometric instrument model, we have generated synthetic observational data to explore how well the major C- and O-bearing chemical species (CO, CO2, CH4, and H2O),…